










** v \ v 



^' 



^°* 











~*-^\y v^-v 



"«•' aO 



VST >i^Lr* *> V N .'••- ^ 4?* •J£k%^ 







fire-. *fev* :£M£o*~ **d* :«SSk*. **>** o'jflH 




















- '<?. 



& ♦ 



* ***** "' 








V 



fr-^^v 


















rov 



^ 















***«■ 



• ^\ •• 



& 



>"S 






Evening Thoughts. 



By a Physician. 




LONDON: 
JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW. 



M.D.CCC.L. 



6*? 

G 8« 



Esch, 



v - -horary 
APR 3 t940 



LONDON : 

Printed by S. & J. Bentley and Henry Fley, 
Bangor House, Shoe Lane. 



\^ 



A%W° 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Whole Mind 1 

Unity op the Mind 14 

Head and Heart 19 

Head 21 

Heakt 24 

Will 27 

Imagination 30 

Conscience 33 

Evil 37 

The Knowledge op Evil 42 

Deaf, Dumb, and Blind 47 

Selp-consciousness 50 

..Esthetics 52 

Philosophy and Christianity 54 

Selfishness op the Heart 57 

Bubbles 58 

The Ridiculous ' 60 

Repose and Nonchalance 61 

The Ideal and Life 63 

Three Classes op Painters 66 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Similes 68 

The Moon 70 

Pride 71 

Humility 71 

Goodness 72 

Imitation 72 

Discoverers 73 

Pan 74 

Opposites 76 

Phrenologists 76 

Experimental Psychologists 78 

Self the Centre 81 

Contemplation and Action 83 

Sundays 85 

Systematizing Divines 87 

Dependence 92 

E CCELO DESCENDIT yfdiQi (JEOVTOV 94 

The Open Secret 95 

The Invisible 97 

Fixed Ideas 102 

True Nobility 104 

Hero-worship 106 

Demonology 107 

On Diabolical Possession 112 

The Pre-existence of the Soul 114 

Plato's Trinity 117 

Spiritual Science 121 



CONTEXTS. Vll 

PAGE 

Spiritual Sense-organs 123 

Substance 127 

Light 12 9 

Spiritual Analogies .' 130 

Analogies between Natural and Spiritual Genera- 
tion 131 

Analogies between the Vital Principle and Spiri- 
tual Life 135 

The Full Enjoyment of Nature 137 

The Spiritual Tendencies of Modern Physical 

Science 138 



Evening Thoughts. 



The Whole Mind. 

One metaphysician believes that the mind 
is produced by the senses ; another, that it 
is a spiritual organism consisting of various 
faculties or powers forming one whole, and 
making use of the senses to gain a knowledge 
of the outer world. According to the theory 
of the first, the mind is a " tabula rasa" a 
blank sheet of white paper, on which are 
written the signatures of the outer world by 
means of the impressions which that world 
makes on the senses. The advocates of the 
second doctrine believe that the mind is ex- 
cited, fed, developed, by means of the senses, 
but that they do not make it. They convey 
to it signals from without, but it has its own 
native powers of reason, understanding, love, 
will, conscience, which never could have been 






2 The Whole Mind. 

constructed by the senses; and certain fun- 
damental ideas which experience could not 
have supplied. The old aphorism of the 
Peripatetics, " There is nothing in the mind 
not derived from the senses," is the statement 
of the first doctrine : the completion of the 
sentence by Leibnitz, " except the mind itself," 
is the modification of the second. To get 
up by memory a metaphysical theory is as 
useless as any other acquisition of mere words ; 
but to test a theory by the individual's own 
experience, and only to accept it as a truth 
when he finds that it supplies him with a key 
to the secrets of his own mind, is a scientific 
method of attaining self-knowledge, which no 
thoughtful man should despise. This ques- 
tion becomes therefore of practical use, if each 
asks himself whether this or that theory ex- 
plains the facts of his own consciousness. 

Take the sense of sight. It may be true 
to the experience of one self-observer that his 
mind has become a gallery of beautiful pictures. 
Nature may have provided her share from 
her lime avenues, her old thorns with their 
young May blossoms, her green meadows, and 
clear running streams, from her snowy cata- 
racts, and stormy white-crested waves, or her 



The Whole Mind. 3 

calm deep-blue ocean depths. Art may have 
added her creations, and by the side of God's 
living pictures may be ranged the works of 
inspired men, so that the accomplished mind 
becomes "a mansion for all lovely forms." 
"Such a mind may be able to recall the mo- 
ment when first it felt that one of these im- 
pressions from without was beautiful. The 
self-observer may remember, when looking at 
a wood clothed in its rich and luxurious, and 
as yet unfaded, summer leaves, and bathed 
in that summer's liquid yellow light, that he 
suddenly experienced an intense and vivid 
feeling of its beauty, such as he never had 
before, and which has never left him altogether 
since : — like the awakening of a dormant 
power within him, of an inner sense of the 
beautiful, by which he has been enabled to 
appreciate beauty as he could not do pre- 
viously, which sense all beautiful objects have 
fed and strengthened. Such experience is to 
him conclusive that there is, besides the pas- 
sive reception of beautiful impressions, an 
active power which feels the beautiful in 
them. 

This sense of the beautiful, or idea of the 
beautiful, existing as a dormant power of the 

B 2 



4 The Whole Mind. 

mind, and suddenly awakened by an impres- 
sion of the sense, and nourished by a repe- 
tition of the impressions, enables one, who 
has thus experienced it, to understand the 
meaning of those who contend that ideas are 
innate. He has the conviction, from personal 
experience, that such impressions on the nerve 
of sight is one fact, the feeling of their beauty 
another, and that this later awakened sense is 
a new source of pleasure, as a new sense would 
be. He will be unable to convey his con- 
viction to another who has not gone through 
the same experience ; but that other may be 
convinced of the principle by experiences to 
which he is a stranger. Thus the idea or 
sense of immortality may supply another mind 
with an experimental fact. 

" A man," says Jean Paul Richter, " may be- 
lieve in the immortality of the soul for twenty 
years ; but only in the twenty-first — in some 
great moment, is he astonished at the rich 
substance of his belief, at the warmth of this 
naphtha-spring." His sense of immortality is 
awakened by perhaps a deeper reflection on 
some instance of mortality. He feels that he 
is immortal, — that he can never perish, and he 
has exchanged a mere notion for an idea: — 



The Whole Mind. 5 

a shadow for a truth : — knowledge about a 
thing for knowledge of it: — a sign for the 
thing signified : — a mere opinion for a deep 
joy, which nothing earthly gave, nor can 
destroy. 

But there is no proof to the mind which 
seeks the truth by examining itself, more 
entirely conclusive as to the essential dif- 
ference between the sensations of outward 
things, and the state of mind they excite, 
than in its affections. Let each reader of 
this ask himself, whether the bodily sensa- 
tions produced by the pressure of the hand, 
the sound of the voice, the hand-writing of 
a friend, are the same as the affection they a- 
waken. Again, if the mind were the mere pro- 
duct of the senses, it could have no thoughts, 
aspirations, or wishes, which the senses have 
not furnished. It could not rise above its 
origin. If it sprang from the impressions of 
this world it must be of this world. But the 
reflective man knows he has types within 
him infinitely above those which the outer 
world could have fashioned; that he has a 
prototype of the true, of the just, of the good, 
in his own soul, such as neither his own 
actions, nor the deeds of mankind, could have 






6 The Whole Mind. 

supplied him with.* For whence, in this im- 
perfect world, or in his own conduct, could 
he have derived the pattern of absolute truth, 
complete goodness, perfect justice, with which 
he measures the acts of others and of himself, 
and feels their and his deficiencies ? Whence 
did he derive that ideal of happiness which 
nothing on earth satisfies? If this shifting, 
changing scene where death is ever present, 
and mutability is the law ; if this outward 
material world of vicissitude produced the 
mind, whence could be derived that profound 
impression of immortality which has been con- 
genial to the human soul at all times and 
in all nations ? 

How could visible and material changes 
produce the conviction of an invisible, spiritual 
God? 

It is undeniable that a man's mind may 
become " the mind of his own eyes " merely : 

* This was the metaphysical creed of Milton, who 
makes Satan thus panegyrize our Saviour. 

" I see thou know'st what is of use to know, 
What best to say canst say, to do canst do ; 
Thy actions to thy words accord, thy words 
To thy large heart give utterance due, thy heart 
Contains of good, tvise, just, the perfect shape." 

Paradise Regained, III. 7. 



The Whole Mikd. 7 

that by constant intercourse with the earth, 
his mind may be of the earth, earthy ; that 
if he habitually quenches his nobler feelings 
and studies his material interests and bodily 
comforts alone, he may reach such a degra- 
dation as to feel a certain satisfaction in the 
term " man of the world," although that 
phrase implies an habitual course of action 
in reference to this world only, and conse- 
quently low, sordid, and limited ; whilst a 
feeling like shame may be called out by the 
phrase of Quixotism, as applied sneeringly to 
an unselfish and unworldly, and truly noble 
action : but this condition of the mind is a 
disordered, a diseased, and depraved one, 
which it is the object of due culture to pre- 
vent, or to raise the man out of. 

To the fact that the outer world is inferior 
in dignity to the human soul, Lord Bacon 
traced the profound impression which heroic 
poetry has always made on the mind of 
man. He saw that greater grandeur, perfect 
order, and a more beautiful variety than can 
be found in human nature since the fall, is 
necessary to satisfy the human mind. And 
thus, as the actions and events of history 
are not vast enough to fill the mind, the 






8 The Whole Mind. 

poet paints more heroic deeds, accommodating 
the images of earthly things to the aspirations 
of the mind, not submitting the mind to 
things. 

Now, if the mind is superior in dignity 
to the outer world, the impressions which 
that outer world produces on the senses could 
never have produced the mind. 

And do not our novels, the heroic prose- 
poetry of our day, prove the same thing ? Is 
not the universal craving after such food, from 
the errand-hoy who buys his penny tale of 
horror, up to the reader of the fresh three - 
volume novel, a proof that something more 
is desired than experience can furnish, and 
that the relish is for higher events, more 
exalted aims, more ideal personages than every- 
day life affords? The reader's ideal may not 
be a high one, but it is something beyond 
his own experience. 

Recently the two theories have been prac- 
tically tested in this way. The Mosaic His- 
tory tells us that the first man was created 
a complete man, that he was endowed at 
once with language, as a gift, and did not 
acquire it by the slow process of instruction ; 
that he was created with the power of naming 



The Whole Mind. 9 

all birds and beasts, and thus of expressing 
their qualities, that he had the faculty of rea- 
soning, the social affections, the sense of the 
beautiful, a free will, and a reproving con- 
science, all the qualities of complete man- 
hood. The French philosophers of the last 
century disbelieved this tradition, and asserted 
that man was created an untaught savage, 
and rose gradually from the state of uncul- 
tivated nature into the condition which modern 
culture exhibited. At this juncture a wild 
man was found in the forests of Aveyron, and 
brought to Paris as a prize. Here was the 
hypothetical Adam to be trained into a civi- 
lized man. Itard, a French physician, un- 
dertook his education, and adapted his plans 
according to the first metaphysical theory we 
have mentioned, that the mind is the product 
of the senses, and that education consists in 
impressing the outward world on the senses. 
Itard failed in his attempt altogether. But 
his failure led his pupil, Seguin, to the suc- 
cessful education of idiots. He saw why 
Itard failed. For he was convinced that the 
mind was not a mere blank sheet of paper 
to be written on from without, but was a 
spiritual organism, with its own powers of 

b 5 



10 The Whole Mind. 

will, intellect, and conscience, and that the 
essence of education lay in rousing this con- 
science, intellect, and will, to spontaneous 
action. As soon as he had excited the idiot 
to perform one spontaneous act which de- 
noted reflection, he found that the greatest 
difficulty was vanquished. He roused the 
dormant power by means of the senses, but 
did not confound the senses with the mind. 
His success has been great. 

Dr. Conolly thus describes his visit to the 
idiot school of the Bic&tre. 

" No fewer than forty of these patients 
(idiots) were assembled in a moderate-sized 
school-room, receiving various lessons, and 
performing various evolutions under the di- 
rection of a very able schoolmaster, M. Se- 
guin, endowed with that enthusiasm respect- 
ing his occupation, before which difficulties 
vanish. In all these cases the crowning glory 
of the attempt is, that whilst the senses, the 
muscular powers, and the intellect, have re- 
ceived some cultivation, the habits have been 
improved, the propensities regulated, and some 
play has been given to the affections ; so that 
a wild, ungovernable animal, calculated to 
excite fear, aversion, or disgust, has been 



The Whole Mind. 11 

transformed into the likeness and manners 
of a man. It is difficult to avoid falling into 
the language of enthusiasm on beholding such 
an apparent miracle." 

Seguin's success is not instructive merely 
as a proof of the truth of a metaphysical 
theory, but also as proving the practical im- 
portance of mental science, as he based a 
successful system of education for a class of 
human beings, considered as incapable of any 
improvement from education, on a true know- 
ledge of the structure of the mind. Gug- 
genbuhl had been following out a somewhat 
similar plan on the Abendburg for the educa- 
tion of the Swiss Cretins. Two men, one in 
the most frivolous city of the world, the other 
on a solitary mountain-top, are thus devoting 
their lives to the education of the most repul- 
sive, the most helpless, and the lowest form of 
human nature. And this is not the humanity 
which merely visits distress, but that which 
lives amongst it, and for its amelioration. 
Many are equal to that exhibition of humanity 
which works hard for others whilst it lives 
apart in quiet, in comfort, and often in luxury; 
but how few to a devotion which is as far 
above that of many public men, whose deeds 



12 The Whole Mind. 

are .marked by marble monuments, as the 
devotion of a sick man's wife, or nurse, is 
beyond the attention of a sympathising morn- 
ing visitor. 

The theory, therefore, which explains most 
completely and satisfactorily the facts of our 
own consciousness, is that the mind is a spi- 
ritual being enclosed in a material and living 
organization, and that, for the education of the 
mind in this state of being, the impressions 
on the senses are as necessary as food, air, 
and exercise are for the developement of the 
bodily organization. That the senses feed 
the mind, and excite the action of its own 
innate natural powers, but that they do not 
produce these powers. 

The individuality of each mind, indepen- 
dently of education, is thus distinctly recog- 
nized, and this is a main point both in the 
education of others, and in self-culture. 

The full recognition not only that I am 
a distinct variety of the species man, but that 
each of my fellow-men differs naturally also 
from me and from all others, is greatly con- 
ducive to true liberality. The despotic will 
leads to irritation at the exhibition in others 
of opinions, thoughts, wishes, and acts, in 



The Whole Mind. 13 

opposition to our own. The consideration of 
the natural individuality of each man as a 
fact, assuages this devilish pride. It is. " that 
Consideration which, like an angel, came and 
whipped the offending Adam out of him." 
Magnanimity is the fruit of such reflection. 
Those who act spontaneously on this prin- 
ciple have true nobility of soul. Generosity 
is a natural faculty of such minds. 

In self-culture, by distinctly recognizing his 
own individual powers, as originally and spe- 
cifically belonging to his mind, a man is less 
likely to waste his strength in cultivating 
those faculties which are dormant or feeble. 
He is taught also to be contented with the 
mental place assigned him among his fellows, 
and not to attempt to imitate those from 
whom he differs essentially by natural con- 
stitution. He thus avoids self-contradiction, 
-^-the source of all affectation. By reflecting 
on the harmony and beauty which spring in 
all nature from variety, he sees that his in- 
dividuality is but a part of a wide and con- 
summate plan. A wood in which the gnarled 
oak, the delicate larch, the graceful birch, the 
wide-spreading beech, the old thorn, even the 
rough briar, and the fern in the foreground, 



14 Unity op the Mind 

are all varieties essential to the general effect, 
of beauty or grandeur in the landscape : 
teaching him a lesson of content with the 
condition assigned to him here, by that Power 
which framed his soul as well as the trees 
he is gazing upon, and appointed him his 
place, as it has theirs, in this great whole. 
To fill that place well, however humble it 
may be, he feels is his duty, the sole pur- 
pose for which he was placed here. He 
has no sure instincts to guide him to this 
end. He must accomplish this by labour in 
the right direction. 



Unity of the Mind and Personal 
Identity. 

Every individual of sound mind has a firm 
conviction that he is one and the same person 
that he has ever been. It matters not that he 
has exchanged the dependent fragility of child- 
hood for the vigour of youth, or the firmness 
of manhood, for the decrepitude of age ; that 
he has been mutilated, that he has lost his 
limbs or some of his outward senses, or even 
the consciousness of the existence of nearly 



and Personal Identity. 15 

the whole of his body ; or that his opinions, 
his thoughts, his feelings, have varied, and 
even his character has changed : he is still as 
certain that he is one and the same person 
he was at any past period, however short 
or long, to which his memory reaches. On 
what does this conviction of personal unity 
and identity depend? 

During this time his body has been in a 
constant state of change, the old parts have 
been removed, and replaced by new ones 
similar to the old, and these again, in their 
turn, have been carried away, and new matter 
substituted, to undergo again the same vicissi- 
tude. The free air always floating around 
him has been fixed by plants, and with the 
water and the earth has been converted by 
their vegetable life into organic forms, which 
have then been elevated in his body to 
animal matter, to be in their turn degraded 
and restored again to air, water, and earth, 
when their temporary and more noble purpose 
has been fulfilled, and again to pursue the 
same unvarying round. His body is like a 
river, in which every atom of water is un- 
ceasingly replaced by another as the whole 
flows on into the sea. As, therefore, the 






16 Unity op the Mind, 

matter of which the body consists is in a 
constant state of change, this consciousness 
of unity and identity cannot consist in the 
sameness of the matter, in the mere outward 
body — that which is tangible or visible being 
identically the same at all the seven stages 
of his earthly life; but the unity and identity 
must be mental. It must be one and the 
same mind which has willed, and thought, 
and felt; and however various the thoughts 
and feelings and actions have been, whether 
earnest or trifling, painful or pleasant, good 
or bad, yet these are merely different modes 
of action of one and the same thinking prin- 
ciple, which has alone remained permanent 
amidst bodily changes ; the sole thing fixed 
in this invariable vicissitude, profoundly self- 
conscious of its oneness and sameness. In 
this view the mind presents itself to our con- 
templation as the really enduring part, of which 
the body is the transient, ever-shifting enve- 
lope : as the mysterious occupant of the 
body — as that invisible being which looks out 
of those pure achromatic lenses of the eyes — 
which listens through those elaborately con- 
trived hearing trumpets, the ears ; which is 
the hidden musician who plays on that wind- 



and Personal Identity. 17 

instrument, the organ of voice — the concealed 
mechanist who makes the limbs the engines 
to perform his actions. The body in this 
view becomes merely, or chiefly, the mecha- 
nical means of conveying to the mind within 
it the notices of the outward world, and of 
enabling that invisible recipient of these 
impressions to react upon that world. The 
visible and tangible part of man is as the 
pipes and keys and stops and outside deco- 
rations of an organ, whose organist is con- 
cealed by a close curtain. There are certain 
bellows, and tubes, and stops, and other me- 
chanical arrangements to throw the air into 
their solemn and harmonious vibrations, but 
these tubes are not the cause, there is a 
hidden musician who discourses such elo- 
quent music. So with the body. It is the 
instrument of a hidden performer. It is the 
temple of an invisible being. It is necessary 
to dwell much on this view, and to put it 
practically into action, not only by earnestly 
reflecting on ourselves, and seriously looking 
at other men, as minds, as spirits, as invisible 
natures, akin to the Deity, though clothed in 
human form; but also in treating ourselves 
and others with that reverence which such 



18 Unity op the Mind. 

a view inspires. Our fellow-man may be 
coarse, ill-shapen, ill-favoured, mutilated, but 
at the bottom of these appearances there is 
an invisible person akin to the Divine, looking 
through and acting by means of this ungainly 
mechanism which disguises his soul's immen- 
sity: — a spirit, not matter, — a person, not 
a thing, — perhaps, a concealed angel. Many 
arguments may be brought forward for the 
existence of the mind distinct from, though 
united with the body, but none comes closer 
to the individual experience of each than 
this : "I am the same person I have always 
been, and yet my body has constantly changed : 
it is by my mind that I am conscious of 
this identity : in its unchangeableness does 
my identity depend : that by which I think 
and feel and act is permanent, though my 
body is undergoing in every breath I take a 
perpetual, unceasing decay and renewal : I 
cannot, therefore, but recognize this mind as 
my true self, the permanent reality, the 
true basis of my body, which is its shifting 
garment." 



19 



Head and Heart. 

The mind is one and indivisible ; but, as 
the body is a unity, and yet consists of various 
parts, which must be divided in order to be 
distinguished, so must the various faculties 
of the mind be regarded separately, in order 
that they may be comprehended as a whole. 
But their actual unity must never be for- 
gotten. The commonest primary division of 
the mind is into head and heart ; the intellec- 
tual powers and moral feelings ; thought and 
love. 

Thought may be said generally to be the 
relation of the mind to things ; love, its rela- 
tion to persons. The characteristics of the 
two sexes illustrate the distinction. As the 
chief earthly duties of women are the bearing, 
rearing, and training of children, their chief 
relations are with persons. In women, there- 
fore, love is more developed than thought, 
the heart is cultivated more assiduously than 
the intellect. Labour is the duty of man. 
His earthly work is to provide for the bodily 
wants of the weaker ones, and of himself. 
His relationship is consequently stricter with 



20 Head and Heart. 

things than with persons. He employs his 
intellect more than his heart. The fixed idea 
of a man is a thought about things ; of a 
woman, a thought about persons. 

Even when persons are the ultimate object 
of the man's idea, the human beings are not 
so much considered as the intellectual scheme 
or plan by which they are to be improved or 
ruled. With the benevolent man some plan 
for the amelioration of the poor becomes a 
fixed idea; with the politician, some scheme 
by which he or his party can obtain power. 
It has happened that a man of the widest 
general benevolence has been deficient in the 
minor charities of home. 

The fixed idea of a woman is a person, 
her lover, her husband, her children ; or, 
where the love is more extended, it takes the 
form of visiting those in prison, or in sick- 
ness, or in want, and thus coming into direct 
intercourse with persons. 

But although, for the sake of illustration, 
thought and love may be viewed separately 
in the sexes, there is happily no such separa- 
tion in nature; or, if there is, it is morbid. 
The trained and duly developed man softens 
his harder thoughts with more human ones; 



Head and Heart. 21 

whilst the mature woman, though still a wo- 
man, is " a being breathing thoughtful breath." 

The disunion is a false state. It makes 
the man a cold-blooded tyrant, — a woman a 
soft-hearted fool. 

Pride is the vice of this isolation of the 
intellect; a contempt for others, and a cold, 
hard indifference. Jealousy, hatred, softness, 
enviousness, and desire are corruptions of the 
heart. 

Head. 

The understanding is that power of the 
mind which judges of the impressions pro- 
duced on the senses. Thus, outward things 
strike the senses, which are the gates of the 
intellect. The impressions are fixed in the 
memory, which supposes attention. Subse- 
quently the mind recollects these images of 
outward things, and reflects on them. It 
separates the like from the unlike by abstrac- 
tion, and classes the like together by gene- 
ralization. These acts are the function of the 
understanding, " and the power of so doing is 
what we mean when we say we possess under- 
standing." It is thus " the faculty judging 



22 Head. 

according to sense." But, superadded to the 
understanding is the reason, or that higher 
power by which we apprehend objects and 
truths above the senses. The idea of God, 
of our own soul, of immortality, of free-will, 
of holiness, of happiness, of the good, and 
of the beautiful, are the objects of the rea- 
son. In relation to science, the reason is the 
power which " gives birth to the science of 
mathematics," and apprehends the highest 
physical laws. 

The understanding reflects, but the reason, 
as Hooker justly teaches, is a direct aspect of 
truth, an inward beholding, having a similar 
relation to the spiritual, as sense has to the 
material. The reason appeals to itself as the 
ground of its decisions, and this appeal is 
attended by an absolute conviction of truth, 
such as cannot result from the generalizations 
of the understanding. For instance, that any 
two inclosing lines of a triangle must be greater 
than the third, is a truth of the reason, and 
the conviction it produes is altogether of a 
higher kind than a mere generalization from 
a number of facts of experience, such as sta- 
tistics supply, which might be overthrown by 
additional data. 



Head. 23 

The reason is the sense-organ of all spi- 
ritual truths. The Christian scheme is not 
discoverable by reason, but is in accordance 
with it, so that faith is the highest exercise 
and the perfection of the reason. This being 
the case, we must guard against making the 
senses, and that faculty of mind by which 
we compare and judge of their impressions, 
the judges of spiritual truths. It is as unwise 
a proceeding as if we were to try to determine 
the shades of colour by the smell. 

But in distinguishing these two powers, we 
do not divide them, for they are inseparable, 
and although the understanding, considered 
alone, is but a low power, as it deals with 
sense, and " its object is the material world in 
relation to our worldly interests," yet, as the 
servant of the reason, it is ennobled, for 
it thus becomes the necessary instrument for 
the perfection of the highest mental power, 
or, as Shakspeare calls it, " the discourse of 
reason." * 

* In thus considering the Reason as the organ by 
which we perceive Spiritual Truths, there is a difficulty 
at first in reconciling this with God being himself the 
Supreme Reason, and these Spiritual Truths emanations 
of that Reason, — the thing perceived and the percipient 
being identical. But yet this view is in entire accord- 



24 Head. 

The reason, then, is the " lumen siccum" 
"the pure sense, the inward vision, the reine 
Anschanung of the German philosophers," by 
which spiritual realities, and the proportions 
of geometry, and the highest laws of physical 
science are contemplated, and the understand- 
ing is that lower faculty by which we reflect 
and generalize on objects of sense. 



Heart. 

The word love has been so misapplied, so 
mischievously abused, and so lowered from 
its true meaning, that it has lost its place 
in science, and has been left, with the ex- 
ception of writers on religion, to the undis- 
puted possession of poets, poetasters, and 
novelists. And yet it is the highest faculty 

ance with the Christian doctrine, that God's Spirit will 
work with our spirit in purifying our nature, and that we 
are made in God's image, and are His children, and that 
every good thing in us proceeds from Him. Such, then, 
being the fact, we must admit ' that this is the proper dif- 
ference between all spiritual faculties and the bodily senses ; 
the organs of spiritual apprehension having objects con- 
substantial with themselves, or being themselves their own 
objects, that is, self-contemplative.' — Coleridge. 



Heart. 25 

of the soul, that alone will be immortal. It 
is the single word which defines the Deity 
himself. 

As thought is distinguished into a lower 
and a higher, the understanding and the rea- 
son, the one faculty judging of sense, and 
the other of things above sense, so love may 
be distinguished into sensual and spiritual 
love, a higher and a lower ; and as the lower 
understanding must be the servant of the 
higher reason in the due developement of the 
intellect, so must all the pleasures of sense, 
however refined, be in subjection to that 
higher love, which has God for its object, in 
the real cultivation of the heart. 

As the contriving instincts of animals be- 
come in man Understanding from their union 
with the reason; so the animal instincts are 
raised to the height of human affections by 
their subjection to the pure spiritual faculty 
of love. The man without reason to guide 
his understanding is a mere fox. He whose 
animal instincts are not subjugated by love 
is a goat. 

But here, again, we must never forget 
that the mind is one ; that thought and love 
co-exist. They are, as it were, bi-polar 

c 



26 Heart. 

forces ; two opposite powers tending to rest 
by equilibrium. When reason and love meet 
and become one, the union is the ideal man. 
The grand object of Christianity on earth is 
to produce this union. The written principles 
are alone to be found in the New Testament. 
The means of practising them is the infusion 
of a new spiritual power through Christ. 

Happily there exists a clear description of 
the right state of the affections, a perfect model 
by which the actual defects of the affective part 
of our own nature may be compared. This 
love " suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not; 
vaunteth not itself ; is not puffed up ; doth 
not behave itself unseemly ; seeketh not her 
own ; is not easily provoked ; thinketh no evil ; 
rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the 
truth ; beareth all things ; believeth all things ; 
hopeth all things; endureth all things." 

And love thus denned — spiritual love, the 
influence of the Divine life on the heart, is 
above all the gifts of the intellect, however 
high, for it is immortal. Knowledge in a 
higher world will be merged in certainty, 
faith will be lost in actual sight, hope in full 
realization, but love will last. Even on earth 
this love is the highest gift, the indispensable. 



Heart. 27 

Though a man had such wisdom as would 
enable him to fathom the deepest laws of 
nature ; or enough talent to acquire all written 
knowledge ; had he the power of foretelling 
future events ; or faith strong enough to work 
miracles ; had he benevolence enough to give 
up all his possessions to the poor, and zeal 
enough to go to the stake as a martyr, yet 
without this love (we are distinctly told by 
an apostle, whose words we are paraphrasing) 
these gifts and sacrifices would, in God's 
sight, be of no worth to him. He would be 
not lung. He might belong nominally to the 
Church, but he would not be a true member, 
for he would not possess that Divine life, 
which Christ died that he might obtain, for 
it is God, and God is love. 



The Will. 

The will is the power of originating an act. 
A man arrives where two roads meet, he stops, 
observes the direction of each, and having 
come to the conclusion that one of these is 
the. right way, he steps forward. The power 
which he exerts is his will, a free act of self- 

c 2 



28 The Will. 

determination to set in motion the muscles 
of his limbs. Contrast this with an invo- 
luntary act. The heart is a hollow muscle 
which is in constant motion, forcibly expelling 
the blood seventy times in every minute. But 
its contraction is independent of our will, we 
can neither by thought increase or diminish 
the number of its contractions. What proof 
have we of the difference between the volun- 
tary motion of our limbs, and the involuntary 
motion of our heart, so strong, and so con- 
vincing, as our own consciousness? " We feel 
that we are free, and that is all about it," as 
Dr. Johnson, in his sagacious way, ended an 
argument on the freedom of the will. 

Physiologically the will is free, but is it so 
morally ? Can a man, in his present imperfect 
state, act up to the dictates of his higher 
reason by his own free will? All experience 
proves that he cannot do this. He must 
seek a supply of power above his own. The 
promptings to seek this supply are the 
evidence of a Divine light illuminating his 
mind. But still he may reject or follow these 
promptings. If this clearer illumination 
compelled him to act in a certain course, it 
would reduce the divine light to an instinct, 



The Will. 29 

and to a lower degree than animal instinct, 
as a less decisive guide. 

There is a certain difficulty in reconciling a 
free will with a superintending and guiding 
Providence. But take an analogous instance, 
where a man stands in the relation of a guiding 
Providence to an animal. The horse has a 
will. Breaking in, the harness, the reins, the 
whip, the spur, all are proofs of the animal's 
will, and of the necessity of its training. The 
horse is harnessed to a vehicle and guided by 
a man. So far as the animal's free will is 
exerted in the direction the driver chooses, 
the animal fulfils his purpose. Let him exert 
that will in opposition to his ruler, and he 
is driven by the lash to submission. So with 
man. He has a self- determining power, and as 
Jong as he submits that will to the obedience 
of his reason, enlightened by the Divine light, 
he is fulfilling his duty; he is working with 
and by his Maker; his will is in harmony 
with the Divine will. But deprive it of its 
freedom, and it becomes an instinct ; respon- 
sibility ceases, and the foundation of all free- 
dom, law, and self-culture, is destroyed. 

Every form in which unselfishness is realized 
is beautiful. 



30 The Will. 

Patriotism, or the annihilation of all self- 
interest, in the good of our country ; loyalty, 
the same feeling exhibited to our Queen, the 
visible head of the state, the embodiment of 
its idea; chivalry, or devotion to women as 
such, or to one in whom the perfections of 
the whole sex are embodied, or thought to 
be ; love, " given, encouraged, sanctioned, 
chiefly for that end." 

" That self might be annulled, its bondage prove 
The fetters of a dream opposed to love ;" 

devotion, an absolute submission of our own 
will to that of the Deity : — all these ennoble 
our being, and are the characteristics of our 
humanity. But each supposes freedom, — sub- 
mission, with free will, either to our country, 
our Queen, our mistress, our God. Then only 
can it be said, 

" There is no liberty like to this bondage." 



Imagination 

Is that mental power, which, in the words 
of one who assuredly spoke from experience, 
" gives to airy nothings a local habitation 
and a name;" or, according to the definition 



Imagination. 31 

of another, who was at once poet and meta- 
physician, the faculty " which incorporates the 
reason in the images of the sense." 

It is the characteristic power of the artist, 
who clothes spiritual truths in sensuous images, 
by means of words in poetry, by sound in 
music, by colours and forms in painting, by 
form alone in statuary and architecture. 

The eye to see in visible forms the invisible 
law, combined with the hand to give to the 
visible the invisible power, constitutes genius ; 
the union of reason and imagination. Raphael 
saw in the human face the outward expression 
of the Divine nature of man : one of the proofs 
afforded to our senses that he is indeed made 
in the image of God ; an expression transient 
even in those who have not yet had time 
to forget " the glories they have known, and 
the imperial palace whence they came ;" but 
which, transient and rare though it may be, 
we make still rarer by overlooking. This 
best expression, that of unconscious purity 
of soul v or repose in something higher than 
self, and other than self-satisfaction, Raphael 
transferred to canvas, and rendered perma- 
nently visible to all eyes, — moral beauty : not 
mere animal beauty, not even the mere beauty 



32 Imagination. 

of form, but a higher kind, spiritual beauty. 
There are times when the calm beauties of 
external nature sink deepest into our hearts. 
The golden glow in which the evening sun 
steeps the earth seems richer; the early morning 
light casts more exquisitely delicate shadows ; 
the grass and the trees above them are of a 
fresher, brighter green against a bluer sky; the 
evening clouds are more heaven-like in their 
gorgeous glories ; we feel more earnestly that 
these all are the outward symbols of a Divine 
Spirit ; the visible emblems of a present and 
Invisible God. Have not Claude, and Ruysdael, 
and our own Collins, fixed these scenes, as beheld 
at such moments when the mind is most 
in harmony with nature, and thus idealized 
nature ; fixed its ever-shifting forms at the 
moment when they had most impressed the 
observers that they were the outward and 
visible image of an internal and Divine power ? 
And the unknown discoverer of Gothic archi- 
tecture ; the meditative churchman, whose 
academy was the fir-forests, and who found 
in the law of vegetable form the principle 
which he embodied in stone, has not he im- 
pregnated his cathedrals with a spirit, which 
proclaims in a silent voice no healthy mind 



Imagination. 33 

can contradict, that genius can make the 
most rugged matters the means of conveying 
through the outward senses high spiritual 
realities ? 

Has not Mozart conveyed by sound the 
idea of beauty, and Beethoven the deepest 
pathos? The poet's range is greater, from 
the facilities of his instrument. Words are 
the property of all, and go at once to the 
common human heart. His embodiments of 
the ideal can be carried in the memories of 
men. Italy must be visited to appreciate 
her painters and sculptors, and even then 
how faint are the impressions carried away ! 
but Dante's pictures are stamped into the 
memory, and carried by the cultivated man 
over the whole earth. 



Conscience. 

The reason being the faculty by which we 
perceive spiritual truth, all spiritual error is 
attended with a consciousness of this dis- 
turbance in our mind's harmony, which is 
more or less distressing ; just as the erro- 
neous action of the body, when disordered, 

c 5 






34 Conscience. 



is indicated by pain, uneasiness, or some 
other physical sign of the disturbance ; and, 
in both cases, for the same wise purpose of 
warning us against that which is injurious, 
and which we may amend. This spiritual 
warning is what is called a reproving con- 
science. But as the healthy action of the 
bodily functions is attended with complete un- 
consciousness of the actions going on within 
us, producing that agreeable condition of bodily 
ease we call health; so the right action of the 
reason, that is, its harmony with religion on 
the one hand, and our conduct, or rather our 
will, on the other, produces rest of the mind 
so exquisite, as to be well termed " peace 
that passeth all understanding." This is the 
state which must be meant by the phrase, 
"approving conscience;" a term altogether 
untrue to nature, if it involves the existence 
of an inward voice applauding us whenever 
we do right, just as it warns us when we 
do wrong. The pleasure often felt in doing 
a good deed is from another source, and is 
merely that agreeable sensation which attends 
the exercise of any power of the mind. The 
benevolent man feels a pleasure in giving, 
even when it is against his interests ; the 



Conscience. 35 

exercise of wit, humour, imagination, please 
him who employs them. But the use of the 
bad powers gives pleasure also, otherwise there 
would be no temptation to sin. The thief feels 
gratification in the act of stealing, the knave 
in humbug, the more refined deceiver in ruse 
and management, the hoarder in accumulating. 
The pleasure which a man feels in giving is 
no more to be regarded as dependent on a 
complacent approval of an inward voice, than 
the pleasure his neighbour feels from heaping 
up. If a man feels self-conscious of doing 
a good or just act, does not this very feeling 
spoil it in his own estimation? How could 
humility be the distinguishing feature of the 
mature Christian, if he was reminded each 
-time he did well that he had acted rightly, by 
a power equal in force to that which warns 
him so unmistakeably when he does wrong, 
and punishes him so painfully by regret and 
remorse. 

On the contrary, in proportion as a man 
acts rightly and is healthy-minded, he is un- 
conscious of his good acts ; he feels a harmony 
within, which is rest, content, peace, the highest 
earthly happiness ; the analogue of which, in 
the physical condition, is good health. 



36 Conscience. 

And as we are unconscious of the real 
luxury of this bodily state of rest until we 
have suffered pain or disease, so he who has 
lost for a time his mental rest, can alone 
fully appreciate the restoration of its harmony. 
And if the man is honest to himself, (which 
is not an easy task, for it is always a humi- 
liating one,) he will trace all his mind's dis- 
comforts, his restlessness, his disappointments, 
his uneasy sense of a want, his dissatisfaction 
with his condition or with others, to some 
error in his own mental state; and his return 
to rest, repose, serenity, and peace, to a resto- 
ration to the just equilibrium between his 
knowledge of what was right, and his per- 
formance of it, or, in metaphysical terms, to 
the harmony of his reason and his will. He 
will then acknowledge that outward circum- 
stances, and persons, to whom he attributed 
his disappointments and discomforts, were 
only the exciting causes testing, for his ulti- 
mate good, the true state of his own un- 
balanced, ill-regulated mind, and that the true 
cure for unrest is, whenever he loses his 
serenity, to look for that defect in himself, 
which the outward annoyance was best cal- 
culated to expose, and by exposing to lead 



Conscience. 37 

him to rectify it. He thus will shorten his 
restlessness or misery. But, on the other 
hand, if he looks at himself as right, and 
that all the wrong is in other persons, or out- 
ward things, he insures his own permanent 
discomfort, and if his organization is of the 
finer sort, he is not unlikely to die of what 
John Newton so correctly defined as a mixture 
of pride and madness, " a broken heart." 



Evil. 

The perversely evil acts of man from infancy 
to old age, naturally, corporately, and individu- 
ally, and the evil mixed up with all his thoughts, 
of which he becomes conscious by self-reflection, 
when that power is awakened in him, even 
when his outward acts and words are correct 
in other men's eyes, are the proofs objective 
and subjective, historical and experimental, 
of an evil nature, " a fact acknowledged in all 
ages, and recognized, but not originating, in the 
Christian Scriptures." As man has a will, a 
self- determining power, the will must be evil ; 
the -evil must be in his will. For if the evil 
was alone in the sensual or intellectual parts 



38 Evil. 

of his being, overcoming the will when their 
influence became sufficiently strong, then cer- 
tain causes would produce, as in mechanism, 
certain effects, necessarily and blindly, and the 
man would be a thing, not a person. For the 
very ground of personality is his possession 
of a self-determining power, of a choice; and 
if the will is such a power, the evil must 
be there, or it is no responsible will at all. 

Man's will is only free when it is in harmony 
with the Divine will. He may voluntarily 
isolate himself from God, the central power 
from which emanates all truth and goodness. 
He may become his own centre. So far his 
liberty of will extends, and no farther. This 
separation is error — is sin. This union is 
perfect freedom — rest. 

The evil will, which causes this separation, 
is a fact ; it cannot be explained, although 
it must be believed ; it is, therefore, in the 
language of science, " an ultimate fact," in 
the language of philosophy, " a mystery."* 

This evil will, actuating and becoming one 
with his living body, constitutes a corrupt 
nature.f The result of this union is most 

* Argument from Coleridge's Aid to Reflection, 
f Coleridge. 



Evil. 39 

striking when the sensualities of man are 
compared with those of animals. The animal 
does not ruin his body by its indulgences. 
Its sensual instincts are guided by the sus- 
taining law of the universe. It is only man 
who ruins his health, his form, his circum- 
stances, his happiness, his life, who implicates 
in this ruin his fellow-men, and even his 
children, by the unbridled gratification of sense. 
No animal is guilty of such folly. Or the 
evil will may actuate his understanding. It 
may destroy the simplicity of his mind. It 
may blow him up with self-conceit, or with 
pride (less amiable, but as little) ; it may make 
him envious, malicious, cruel, cold-hearted, 
calculatingly selfish. It may turn his instinct 
of self-defence into murder, lying, or deceit ; 
his instinct of property into all-grasping ava- 
rice; his very benevolence into an indolent 
yielding weakness. This perversion of under- 
standing cannot be paralleled in animal nature. 
And yet, " what a piece of work is man ! 
How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! 
in form and moving, how express and ad- 
mirable ! in action, how like an angel ! in 
apprehension, how like a god ! the beauty 
of the world! the paragon of animals!" It 



40 Evil. 

is the very contrast between his powers and 
his acts, between his capabilities and the use 
he makes of them, that most convincingly 
demonstrates his fall. 

The phrenological doctrine, that all the 
faculties of man are good, and that it is only 
an excess, or a defect in the action of each, 
which constitutes error, or sin, will only be 
believed by those who draw their knowledge 
of human nature from the observation of other 
men; and not from such observation joined 
with and corrected by habitual self-reflection, 
on their own secret thoughts, feelings, wishes, 
and motives, compared with the pure standard 
of rectitude which Christianity supplies. That 
sin is a " miasma" which has infected their 
whole being, sensitive and intellectual, and not 
a mere plus or minus of any action or faculty ; 
that, in the words of one who knew human 
nature more intimately than any other mere 
man, our mind is a "mingled yarn of good and 
ill together," no such student can doubt.* 

The doctrine of this innate evil, Christianity 
holds in common with philosophy; what is 

* " The point of dispute, between the Evangelical and 
the mere Moralist, is as to the means of producing a 
reformation in the will, which Christ, at least, thought 



Evil. 41 

peculiar to Christianity is the remedy — the 
doctrine of redemption. 

The recognition of the fallen condition of 
the human soul, that it was created perfect, 
but that perfection was marred rather than 
destroyed, is the secret of the success of our 
great dramatists. The inferior artist makes 
his bad men wholly bad, his heroes faultless. 

But Shakspeare, Fielding, Thackeray, ex- 
hibit the marks of the beast in the best, 
and traits of goodness in the worst specimens 
of human nature. It is so in all the human 

so difficult, as to speak of it, not once or twice, but uni- 
formly, as little less than miraculous, as tantamount to 
a re-creation." 1 

This should be borne in mind in estimating the facts 
brought forward by phrenologists, that evil qualities de- 
pend on a badly organized brain. This may be granted 
without its disproving the freedom of the sinner's wilL 
and his power of becoming better. For the very power 
which Christianity supplies is a supernatural power, a re- 
creation, and therefore perfectly able to overcome any vice 
depending on the organization of the brain, even on the 
phrenologist's own mode of reasoning. He says that a 
small organ may have an energetic action, and thus be 
much more active than a larger organ which is less 
alert. A supernatural power acting through smaller 
organs may thus at once counteract the healthy exercise 
of the larger ones. 

1 Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. iv. p. 323. 



42 Evil. 

characters of the Bible; and he who quotes 
David's notorious sin as a discrepancy in a 
man after God's own heart, without look- 
ing at his noble, brave, generous, affectionate, 
humble, repentant, religious nature, and with- 
out perceiving that an earthly element in the 
divine is the common lot, can neither appre- 
ciate his fellow-men, nor our great drama- 
tists, and is ignorant of himself. 



The Knowledge of Evil. 

The excellence of that state of mind which 
is produced by habitually dwelling on the 
good, is felt by a few days' intercourse with 
C — , who sees the " soul of goodness even 
in things evil." # This gives him a kind and 
buoyant cheerfulness which is pleasantly con- 
tagious. His acuteness seems never to be 
wasted in the detection of faults, either in 

* As we have known this paradoxical phrase danger- 
ously used, it may here be suggested, that the only sure 
way of applying it, seems to be to faults proceeding from 
errors in judgment. To extend it to any such points as 
might bear the aspect of favouring depravity, would bring 
it within the condemnation of " doing evil that good may 



The Knowledge op Evil. 43 

others, or in bodies, or in systems. Many 
a man who is above criticising or sati- 
rising an individual, indulges at the same 
time his pride and his critical faculty, in 
transferring his satire or fault-finding to man 
in the abstract, or to bodies of men, or to 
doctrines. Cowper, with his charming frank- 
ness, and entire absence of any approach to 
self-conceit, admitted at once the truth of 
one reader's annotation in the first volume 
of his poems, that there were many things 
written there, " cum Vile" as well as affec- 
tionately and beautifully. Now you may talk 
with C — for a whole summer's day, and 
there shall not be a jaundiced sentence. It 
seems, however, a very common notion, that 
the knowledge of the bad parts of human 
nature is a desirable branch of knowledge ; 
and that novels which portray such parts 
are useful reading, even for women, instruct- 
ing them in human nature, — in man, the 
noblest study of mankind. But, for those 
not professionally engaged in restraining or re- 
medying the diseases moral or physical of man- 
kind, such a study is not only useless but 
injurious, and is against the common prin- 
ciples of education. The best hand-writing 



44 The Knowledge of Evil. 

is given to children to copy; a correct style 
is formed by the purest writers; manners 
are only attainable by the unconscious imi- 
tation of the well-bred; and, to educate the 
eye to a correct appreciation of the perfection 
of human form the student is not com- 
pelled to copy a dwarf, or to master the 
outline of club-feet, but the Grecian statues. 
He is not even permitted to draw from the 
life, even although the living model is as 
fine a specimen of human organization as 
England could furnish, until he has mastered 
the perfect type of human form in marble, 
which could only be moulded in a country 
where physical beauty was the object of 
national culture. When he has been thus 
imbued with Greek art, and this ideal type 
of human form has become the property of 
his mind, and the inward rule by which at 
all times he judges the correctness of human 
proportions, he may then go to human 
nature, as it is, sensualized by sin, and 
endeavour to catch and perpetuate the re- 
mains of its prime. It is that painter only, 
who, having in his own mind a type of a 
higher beauty, marks and seizes the expression 
of the human being, at the moment when it 



The Knowledge of Evil. 45 

approaches nearest to that type, who attains 
the full power of portraiture. The higher his 
conception is of what the human form should 
be, and is capable of being, the more instan- 
taneous is his detection of the slightest devia- 
tion from these harmonious proportions. And 
the same principle applies to the mind, in 
its appreciation of good and evil. The more 
conversant it is with the good and the beau- 
tiful and the true, the more instantaneously 
it discovers and revolts at the bad, the un- 
lovely, and the false. For the young, or for 
any woman, or for any man, whose object is 
self-culture, to indulge in those works devoted 
to the depiction and demonstration of the 
blackest passages of corrupt heads and hearts, 
must be as injurious to the sense of moral 
beauty, as the constant study of bodily de- 
formity would be to the pupil of high art. 
The artist might get thereby the power of 
the caricaturist, but he would sacrifice his 
immortality : he would make men laugh, but 
he would never make them weep, nor admire, 
nor love. 

But how much deeper is the injury to the 
mind morally, than to the taste sesthetically ! 
The knowledge of evil stains the purity of 



46 The Knowledge of Evil. 

the heart. It is the toad, squat at the ear 
of Eve. It should be shunned by those 
whose purity is both their ornament and their 
security. The innocence of childhood is to 
the self-conscious man its chief charm. The 
ideal woman that a man reverences is pure. 
If she gives the faintest indications that she 
is knowing in evil, the charm is broken. 
She is not porcelain, but common clay. Dr. 
Arnold, in one of his letters, says, " I was 
completely overwhelmed with the matchless 
beauty and solemnity of Rome and its neigh- 
bourhood. But I think my greatest delight 
after all was in the society of Bunsen, the 
Prussian minister at Rome. He reminded 
me continually of you, chiefly by his entire 
and enthusiatic admiration of every thing 
great, and excellent, and beautiful, not stop- 
ping to see or care for minute faults; and, 
though I cannot rid myself of that critical 
propensity, yet I can heartily admire, and 
almost envy those that are without it." 

How characteristic is this of Dr. Arnold ! 
His admiration of the beauty of Rome, but 
his greater love of a noble human being ; 
his estimation of the ideal in another, but 
the prevailing practical and critical in himself, 



The Knowledge op Evil. 47 

and his honesty in admitting it. And the 
following practical wisdom from an old man 
cannot be quoted too often. 

" Are not the mass of men so marred and 
stunted, because they take pleasure only in 
the element of evil-wishing and evil-speaking ? 
Whoever gives himself to this, soon comes 
to be indifferent towards God, contemptuous 
towards the world, spiteful towards his equals ; 
and the true, genuine, indispensable sentiment 
of self-estimation corrupts into self-conceit and 
presumption." (Goethe.) 



Deaf, Dumb, and Blind. 

The examples of those born deaf, and dumb, 
and blind, in whom the two great inlets 
of outward things are closed, and who can 
only gain their knowledge of the external 
world by taste, the lowest faculty of all, 
and by touch, the next above it, are instruc- 
tive, as showing, with how few suggestions 
from the outward world, the original faculties 
of the mind can be called into action; and 
what progress can be made, by the con- 
centrated application of the mind itself to 



48 Deaf, Dumb, and Blind. 

the scantiest materials for thought. Educa- 
tion is clearly seen, in such instances, to be 
the result, not of the abundance of information 
supplied through the senses, but of the use 
made by the mind itself of those few impres- 
sions it has received. And to how many 
of us are not the suggestions of our senses 
as useless, as if we were blind and deaf too ! 
Minute observers of men and manners and 
things, like Dickens, show us how blind we 
have been among the same scenes. The wit 
sees the relations between trifling things 
which to us appeared most distant, and we 
are enchanted at his acuteness. The hu- 
mourist, in the commonest traits of every- 
day humanity, traces the action of some 
great principle which actuates all alike, and 
quietly, and lovingly, without bitterness or 
scorn, exposes the weakness which he feels 
that he shares. The satirist detects, in the 
trivial act, the working of vanity, or pride, 
or selfishness, or littleness, under the cloak 
of virtue ; and, as a laughing devil, or a 
malignant one, holds it up to derision. The 
quick fastidious observer, who is merely 
gifted with a strong sense of the ridiculous, 
sees in a look, a word, an action, however 



Deaf, Dumb, and Blind. 49 

disguised, the faintest trace of affectation, 
and unveils it; while the most highly gifted 
of all discovers in little acts, which minds 
of inferior insight condemn or make sport 
of, some seeds of good, something worthy 
not only of his pity, but of his love. 
And these trivialities, these common every- 
day facts, which to some are the materials 
of observation, wit, humour, satire, kindly 
thought, have gone in at one ear and out 
of the other, or have been laid up in the 
memory only, of the vast majority of those 
who have heard or seen them, without pro- 
ducing any mental fruit, good or bad. The 
mind itself has not been applied to them ; 
has not turned them over and over, and 
viewed them on all sides, in all their varied 
lights and shades and colours. So it is 
with nature. This June morning was to 
one "a fine day," to another "the bridal 
of the earth and sky." The common sun, 
the air, the sky, are to one the mere ma- 
terials for the dullest colloquy, to another 
they are " opening paradise." 






50 



Self-consciousness. 

In looking into Jane Taylor's Poems for 
Infant Minds, the more mature reader may 
be struck with the clear, minute, and severe 
self-dissection of pride; and yet he may re- 
member that these verses made no impression 
on him as a child, while many of the others 
have fixed themselves in his recollection in- 
delibly. Why is this? The child had then 
no self-consciousness ; and the dissection which 
is so painfully true and so humiliating now, 
was merely words, and very dry and dull 
words, too, to one who could not feel their 
truth. This want of self-consciousness is the 
healthy state of childhood ; and a self-conscious 
child has passed out of childhood, and is a 
premature man. Self- consciousness comes 
later. Carlyle seems to have taken a par- 
tial view, when he says that self-conscious- 
ness is a disease, and that the healthy state 
of the mind is unconsciousness ; just as, in 
the healthy state of the body, it is uncon- 
scious of the existence of a stomach, heart, 
or any vital organ. But the analogy is only 
true, in fact, as regards childhood, for all 



Self-consciousness. 51 

mature men are self-conscious. The man 
has a free will, and on himself must the 
cultivation of that into character depend ; and 
to rely on himself, he must know himself; 
to remedy his defects, he must be acquainted 
with them. He finds, sooner or later, if he 
is happy enough to discover it at all, that 
the true freedom of his will consists in its 
harmony with the reason ; and that his reason 
is one with that light which lighteth every 
man who cometh into the world, which be- 
came incarnate in Jesus Christ, and will 
become his light and life too by faith. This 
is the light which shows him his faults, which 
gives his self-consciousness the power of see- 
ing. His self-consciousness is the inward 
eye; this is the light, which, shining into 
that deep and dark cave his own heart, shows 
him the false idols that are placed there, 
and the necessity of their expulsion, before 
it can be the temple of the living God. 

There would be no self-consciousness if 
there were no sin, as there would be no 
occasion for it. For all sin is error; the 
wrong action of the will; the disordered 
state of the mind, which renders its acts con- 
scious. In this sense Carlyle's analogy holds 

d 2 



52 Self-consciousness. 

good, though not his inference. Were the 
mind in health, it would be as unconscious 
of its operations, as the body is when it 
is healthy. This may be granted, for it only 
proves (as self-consciousness is universal) that 
"there is no health in us," that is, in our 
souls. 



^Esthetics. 

^Esthetics (cufffavofjwu, to perceive), or the 
science of art, are the joint result of the 
intellectual and the sensitive life: requiring 
an exquisite delicacy in the organisation of 
the nervous system, to convey to the mind 
the slightest impressions from the external 
world, with intellectual power to appreciate 
them. To enjoy these more refined delights 
of sense, which perfect and harmonious form, 
or richness and delicacy of colour, or the 
harmonies and melodies of sound, supply to 
the cultivated eye or ear, is the privilege 
of many. To give " these airy nothings a 
local habitation and a name ;" to fix in mar- 
ble ideal form, or to render permanent on 
canvas the gentle light of morning, or the 
rich yellow afternoon sun "gilding pale 



^Esthetics. 53 

streams with heavenly alchemy ; " or with 
words alone to represent the luxuriant beauty 
of Eden, is the prerogative of genius : is 
man's creation. What nature is to God 
(has been strikingly said) art is to man. 
As two of the principal faculties of our na- 
ture, refined intellectual power, and an ex- 
quisite material instrument, are thus brought 
into active and harmonious union, their pos- 
sessors are the favourites of mankind. But 
there is a higher faculty still, to which these 
lower ones must be subordinate, or they are 
a misery to the individual, and a curse to 
men. The very sensibility which renders the 
poet, or the painter, or even the lover and 
appreciator of art, so alive to beauty, renders 
him also more painfully susceptible to disap- 
pointments, " to the thousand natural ills that 
flesh is hen to." What Hume said of Rous- 
seau, — that he was like a skinned man among 
furze-bushes, — is too true of all his genus in 
their intercourse with others. The subordina- 
tion to the spiritual, which power Christianity 
can alone supply, is necessary to that balance 
of the mind, in which alone, for such natures, 
there is peace. The higher cultivation of 
the nervous system, which the manners, 



54 ^Esthetics. 

habits, and tastes of the day encourage, ren- 
dering it more susceptible of impressions, 
and more alive, not only to pleasures but 
to pains, makes the highest form of Christi- 
anity essential, not only to salvation in another 
state of existence, but to the health of the 
mind in this, and even to its serenity. 



Philosophy and Christianity. 

Does not philosophy differ from Christi- 
anity, as art differs from nature? Philosophy 
is man's representation of the Divine idea in 
his own mind, and therefore more or less 
distorted by the individual's imperfections. 
It is a mere representation. Like a picture 
it represents a living scene, but is not itself 
alive. Those clouds, that blue summer sea, 
the children playing on the shore, the distant 
wood in the picture, are like nature, ex- 
ceedingly beautiful, but they are lifeless. 
The clouds from which they were copied 
were active with chemical repulsion, the water 
with gravitation, the woods with life, the 
children with life and mind and soul too. 
So with philosophy. It pictures a mind 



Philosophy and Christianity. 55 

trained to be a temple of the Divine idea; 

its rules are the representation of the steps 

to that temple. But there is no life in the 

picture ; no power to produce the effects 

pourtrayed. 

Unless above himself he can erect himself, 
How poor a thing is man, 

the philosopher acknowledges. But there is 
no more power in his words to enable the 
man to erect himself above himself, than in 
the summer sea of the picture to float a ship 
upon its waves. But Christianity, like nature, 
is to the eye a picture, whilst, in reality, it is 
instinct with life. It combines both. With 
philosophy, it proclaims that man is nothing 
unless he realises the Divine idea, unless his 
mind is a mansion for all lovely things, unless 
he becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. 
This is the picture. But it gives also the 
power of effecting this change. It is to the 
man struggling to be a man indeed, what 
chemical action, gravitation, life, is to brute 
matter, — an energy, or power, or force, vivi- 
fying both. It is the only power which 
can make a philosopher, which will raise a 
man above sense, and give him that serenity 
which alone belongs to the kingdom of the 



56 Philosophy and Christianity. 

Ideal, to the Unseen. Philosophy is the 
statue; Christianity is the man: Philosophy 
is the cold marble Laocoon struggling with 
the serpents ; Christianity is the man himself 
struggling with the outward world. 

Are, then, philosophy, ethics, useless? 

Who has ever contemplated the rich lus- 
cious light of Claude's pictures when the 
sun is low, or the tender grace of his 
early morning, without seeing a fresh beauty 
in Nature when he turns to her. You 
see through the painter's eye, and catch 
a beauty you had missed before. Does 
not the calm, collected, earnest dignity of 
Raphael's Madonnas give a fresh interest, and 
almost a new value, to mature womanhood? 
And is not the same true of philosophy? 
Does not he who gets his power from the 
only Source of power, from God through 
Christ, delight also in the human picture, 
in the words of Plato or of Schiller? Are 
not these sometimes a glass, in which he 
looks to see if, in any degree, he actually 
realises the Divine idea? Like the painter 
he goes to nature for inspiration, but to the 
high specimens of his own art to show him 
if he has in any way succeeded. The Chris- 



Philosophy and Christianity. 57 

tian, one who goes to God through Christ, 
for a spiritual power to enable him, as he is 
heaven-born, to hold a heaven- ward course, 
rejects no aids. He does not mistake Aris- 
totle, Plato, Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle, for gods ; — they 
are to him as pictures, and statues to the 
true artist : aids in that art, the true in- 
spiration of which comes from the Maker 
alone. 

Selfishness of the Heart. 

There is a selfishness of the heart, as well 
as a selfishness of the head. In selfishness 
of the understanding, all the individual's acts 
are dictated by his own supposed worldly 
interests. But there is also a selfishness of 
the aifections, to which persons of warmer 
temperaments, of finer susceptibility, of deeper 
feelings, and of more imagination, are prone. 
Such often sacrifice unhesitatingly all their 
worldly interests, everything and everybody, 
for the gratification of their affections ; but, in 
so. doing, they as unhesitatingly sacrifice the 
best interest of others, and their own duties : 
and this it is that marks the affection as 

r. 3 



58 Selfishness of the Heart. 

diabolic, not as divine. It is a sacrifice for 
self-gratification only; it is no self-denial: 
self is uppermost: and as such selfishness is 
often the fault of beautiful, tender, and imagi- 
native women, it puts on so becoming a dis- 
guise, as almost to pass for a virtue. It is a 
vice of the best part of human nature, and 
partakes somewhat of the beauty which it 
mars ; and on this account is more dangerous 
than the more openly odious variety, as the 
highest truths when distorted are the occasion 
of the deepest and most destructive errors. 



Bubbles. 

The microscope has disclosed to us, that the 
whole structure of the body originates in a 
single cell, that this has the power of pro- 
ducing others similar to itself, and that all the 
various tissues of which we are composed are, 
in the first instance, made of these same cells 
arranged in various forms. These cells are 
nothing more than minute bubbles, the material 
of which has been proved by chemical analysis 
to consist of one principle " protein," which is 
resolvable into four colourless gases, with a 



Bubbles. 59 

little sulphur and phosphorus. Shakspeare 

was much nearer to the physiological truth 

than he could have been aware of, when he 

said, — 

The earth hath hubhles, as the water hath, 
And we are of them. 

And yet some will have it, that we are nothing 
more than this ; that our love and hate, our 
joy and sorrow, our memory which can recal 
the thoughts, feelings, or incidents of half a 
century, and our hope which stretches on to 
an eternity, are all the result of the motion 
of these foam bubbles, and are built and burst 
at the same time. Nay more, that a certain 
quantity of these bubbles conceived a Gothic 
cathedral ; the Madonna of St. Sisto ; Hamlet; 
the steam-engine ; foretold eclipses, discovered 
by calculation a new planet, and unravelled 
the laws of the movement of the stars; and 
that, having done this, they became again 
carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxy- 
gen, with a little phosphorus and sulphur, and 
nothing more. There is certainly one argu- 
ment in favour of this theory : its bladder- 
like emptiness favours its supposed parent- 



60 



The Ridiculous. 

The sense of the ridiculous belongs to 
the merely human part of our nature, not 
to the divine. 

Man, vain man, dressed in a little brief authority, 
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, 
As make the angels weep. 

The man laughs at these tricks ; the angel 
looks at them as indications of sin, and 
weeps. The good-natured wit quietly smiles 
at them, and is humorous ; the ill-natured 
sneers at them, and is satirical ; but the angel 
weeps. Had Milton, or Schiller, any sense 
of the ridiculous ? Were they not too deeply 
in earnest? "The world," said Horace 
Walpole, with more seriousness than is com- 
mon to him, "is a comedy to those who 
think, a tragedy to those who feel, — a solu- 
tion of why Democritus laughed, and He- 
raclitus wept." 



61 



Repose and Nonchalance. 

As hypocrisy has been so well said to 
be the homage which vice pays to virtue, 
may not affectation be regarded as the 
homage vulgarity pays to good breeding? 
For affectation is an unsuccessful attempt 
to appear well-bred; and the failure should 
be overlooked rather than blamed, when the 
defect is in manner only, and the heart is 
right. But there is one odious form of 
ill-breeding, which it has evidently required 
much practice, as well as little feeling, to 
attain. As repose is a characteristic of the 
well-bred, so the vulgar replaces it with non- 
chalance. This is his unsuccessful attempt 
to imitate repose, the effect of which he 
feels, though he entirely mistakes its real \ 
nature. 

Repose springs from that true self-respect, 
which respects others as belonging to the 
same human family, and is compatible with a 
conscientious attention to their feelings. Non- 
chalance is marked by a pointed indifference 
to the feelings and opinions of others, and 
even to their presence. The one is serious, 



62 Repose and Nonchalance. 

earnest, thoughtful; the other, often empty- 
headed and frivolous. The one is quietly and 
thoughtfully attentive to the subject which 
interests another's thoughts; the other* is 
coolly and purposely negligent of it. Repose 
sets the inferior in station at once at his 
ease ; nonchalance makes him restless, un- 
comfortable, perhaps vexed. Repose accom- 
panies lowliness of heart ; nonchalance is a 
form of self-conceit. Repose is an effect of 
habitual self-control ; nonchalance is only ac- 
quired by habitually thinking highly of self 
and lightly of others. Repose is an attribute 
of dignity ; nonchalance is of the family of 
contempt. Repose, as the finish of the highest 
breeding, is unconscious ; nonchalance is in- 
tensely self-conscious and self-occupied. Re- 
pose indicates a mind content to be valued 
at its real worth; nonchalance considers its 
own elevation must depend on the depression 
of others. Nonchalance is essentially a state 
of unrest, not of repose ; unrest wishing to 
be thought rest. 



63 



The Ideal and Life. 

"For man on earth," says Schiller, "there 
remains only the choice between the plea- 
sures of sense and the peace of the soul. 
To attain the peace of the soul on earth, to 
make the life here approach the divine life, 
to be free in this kingdom of death, — taste 
not the fruit of the earth. The eye may de- 
light in its outward beauty, but the short-lived 
pleasures of enjoyment are speedily revenged 
by the flight of desire. Matter alone is 
subject to vicissitude ; but the ideal, the in- 
visible type of the good and the beautiful, 
walks above the earth in meadows of light; 
divine with the divinity, the playmate of 
blest natures. Would you rise aloft on her 
wings, cast away the earthly, and fly from 
this narrow gloomy life into the kingdom 
of the ideal. There alone is to be found 
that image of God in which man was created ; 
the ideal type of manhood living in eternal 
youth, free from all the impurities of earth, 
illuminated by the pure rays of absolute per- 
fection ; like the silent phantoms of life who 
are walking in their radiance by the Stygian 



64 The Ideal and Life. 

stream in the Elysian fields, before they 
step down to this earth, the melancholy tomb 
of the immortal. If in actual life the issue 
of our struggle is doubtful, here is victory : 
a victory not given to free your limbs from 
further strife, but to give them new strength. 
For life (even when your wishes rest) bears 
you insensibly along its current. Time wheels 
you unceasingly in its world -waltz — but when 
the boldest courage sinks beneath the feeling 
of our narrow powers and limits, then above 
the hills of the beautiful we joyfully see the 
expected goal." (Das Ideal und das Leben. 
— Schiller.) 

This seems very true. That desire dies 
with possession ; that the pleasures of sense 
never compensate the subsequent pain and 
regret ; that peace and rest of mind can alone 
be found in that which is above sense, in 
the unseen world, which is as real as this 
visible one; that there is present to the 
mind itself, an ideal type of manhood, free 
from all impurities of earth, unselfish, mag- 
nanimous, heroic, perfect in comparison with 
the actual performance of the man, and by 
which he cannot help measuring his acts, and 
painfully feeling their inferiority to his high 



The Ideal and Life. 65 

pattern ; and that, when the mind is engaged 
in sole contemplation of this standard, and 
in aspiration to attain it, it feels at home and 
at rest, is true to the inward experience of 
many. But the more practical English mind 
is sure to ask his more visionary German 
brother, whether this quiet and tranquillizing 
contemplation of his ideal, will actually give 
him power to act up to it; whether, when 
he descends from his lone garden house, and 
mixes with his fellows (who are guided by 
another standard) in the real struggles, or 
even in the intercourse of life, — he will feel 
his unaided endeavours equal to the task 
of keeping him near his glorious model. 
To such a mind, a revelation from God, which 
not only points out the very steps to be 
taken in order to live "in the kingdom of 
the ideal," even when struggling with the 
real, but also gives the power, is of priceless 
worth. In Christ has been given him a 
living example of this ideal pattern, which 
(as Schiller says) every man has "asa silent 
phantom within him;" and by this outward 
example he is to compare his own inward 
standard, which partakes of the defects of his 
own nature, and thus to rectify its propor- 



66 The Ideal and Life. 

tions; and still more, — and this is the very 
essence of our religion, — he is to receive by 
Him an energy to act up to this pattern, a 
power not his own, but acting in unison with 
his own better nature : not only a light, but 
a life. The minds which are akin to Schiller's, 
and have been aided by his genius in rjsing 
to high sources of pleasure, are those which 
will most feel the want of such a power, to 
bring into harmony their outward and their 
inward life. 



Three Classes of Painters. 
(Suggested by a Criticism of Mrs. Jamieson's.) 

The Dutch artist is complete in his power 
of using his outward senses. His eye discerns, 
and his hand embodies, with precision and 
accuracy, external form. His boors, his pot- 
house interiors, barrels, forms, tables, cab- 
bages, are unmistakeable portraits. He is the 
painter of the understanding. His predomi- 
nant power is that faculty which judges by the 
senses. He is the master of commonplace. 

But Murillo, with equal accuracy of form, 
and even greater power of using the material 



Three Classes of Painters. 67 

of his art, not only astonishes us by his imi- 
tation of nature, but fascinates us by appeal- 
ing to our hearts. He has embodied his 
own mild affections. The truths of his under- 
standing have been moulded by his whole 
sensuous nature. His pictures fix us, charm 
us. There is a human beauty of expression 
in his faces, which captivates us : but we still 
feel, even while gazing on them with delight, 
that they are not of the highest class. We 
love them at all times, just as one loves 

A creature not too bright or good, 
For human nature's daily food, 

whilst fully recognising there is a higher 
state which a woman may attain, — 

The being breathing thoughtful breath, 
The traveller betwixt life and death. 

For the highest artist uses his whole mind ; 
his understanding, his affections, and his 
reason. He realizes an idea, — the good, the 
beautiful, the sublime, — one of the truths of 
the pure reason. It is this which, superadded 
to his other powers, gives to his creations 
sublimity, grandeur, dignity, beauty, grace. 
The face of Raphael's Madonna del St. Sisto, 
in the Dresden Gallery, may be gazed at, until 



68 Three Classes op Painters. 

it has produced that feeling which is occasion- 
ally called up by a flower — that it is too 
exquisite to be possible. Like Murillo, Ra- 
phael is "the warm master of our sympa- 
thies," he presses into our hearts ; but he 
does something more, he makes us conscious 
that the artist has approached nearer to the 
"great Architect ;" that he has impersonated 
the highest beauty, the beauty of the soul: 
that union of goodness, gracefulness, dignity, 
humility, tenderness, repose, joy, and love, 
which constitute the temple of the living 
God. 

Similes. 

There is an exquisite simile of Bacon's not 
commonly quoted. Speaking of the mytho- 
logical tales of the Greeks, as founded in 
truths handed down by old traditions, he 
calls them, " The breath and purer spirits 
of the earliest knowledge, floating down and 
made musical by Grecian flutes." 

Lord Bacon, throughout his philosophical 
writings, makes constant use of similes ; and 
thus relieves his works from dryness, and 
his readers from ennui. He seems, however, 



Similes. 69 

to have attached to similes a much deeper 
meaning, than mere illustration implies. He 
looked at the outward world, as the seal or im- 
pression of the Divine ideas, and hence he con- 
sidered that as the divinity is one, there must 
be a unity in his works ; so that a well- 
chosen simile is often, not a mere illustration 
of something like another thing, but is actually 
the same thing in another outward form. His 
love of disentangling hidden meanings, is shown 
in the thought he spent on mythological fables, 
as he believed they contained the germs of 
natural, political, and moral science. For in 
the infancy of the world (he tells us), the 
inventions and conclusions of the reason (now 
trite and vulgar) were, from their novelty, 
too subtle to be comprehended by the com- 
mon and unaccustomed mind, unless the 
poet conveyed them by images to the senses. 
Hence the Tessera? of Pythagoras, the Riddles 
of the Sphynx, the Fables of iEsop. Wise 
men's apophthegms were similes. As hiero- 
glyphics (figure-painting) preceded letters 
(signs), so parables preceded reasoning. "And 
to-day and in all time, the power of similes 
is and will be great, for arguments cannot 
be so clear, nor real examples so appropriate." 



70 Similes. 

If imagination is regarded as the power 
of embodying invisible truths in sensuous 
images, its use in philosophy would consist 
in conveying, in the best manner, the highest 
truths. As the painter does this in colour, the 
sculptor in marble, the architect in stone, 
the musician in sound, the poet in verse, 
so does the philosopher in prose; and the 
manner in which truths are conveyed makes 
so great a difference in their reception, that 
the imagination becomes a faculty of high 
importance. 



The Moon. 

The Moon but reflects the Sun's light. 
He is shining in his full glory over the 
southern world, on its blue oceans, its sandy 
deserts, its huge mountain ridges, its luxu- 
riant palms and plantains. The Moon, like 
a round mirror, catches a few of his beams 
which are passing on into infinite space, and 
turns them down on us in our darkness, 
to cheer us with a gentle, calm, and quiet 
light, a night lamp in this our sleeping 
chamber. We speculate that the planets and 
stars are inhabited worlds, but we have posi- 



The Moon. 71 

tively no data to go upon ; and this single 
satellite of our own, which our glasses enable 
us to map, is entirely against this baseless 
hypothesis. Its surface is barren, it has 
neither vegetation nor atmosphere. Science 
here is in exact accordance with the Mosaic 
history. Facts show that it is no indepen- 
dent world at all, but a servant of this our 
Earth. 



Pride. 



To feel the odiousness and littleness of 
Pride, and the nobility its absence confers on 
the character, look at its presence as mani- 
fested towards yourself in those of no rank, 
and its absence in those of high and acknow- 
ledged station. 



Humility. 

To what a height of self-conceit that per- 
son has attained, who can talk of himself as 
humble. 



72 



Goodness. 



Is not Goodness the beauty of the mind? 
and thus has Plato taught the highest kind of 
beauty. 



Imitation. 

Those who have opportunities of watching 
infants and young children, cannot but be 
struck with their likeness to their nurses, 
especially when the nurse has occupied the 
place of the mother. In later stages there 
is more assimilation of the mind and man- 
ners of the young to those they live with 
and look up to, than in features. The stronger 
mind impresses the weaker with something 
of its own likeness. This is in analogy with 
what we are to expect from constant com- 
munion with God. Even here, seeing in his 
word and in His works His Image as if re- 
flected in a glass, and making both the con- 
stant objects of devout contemplation, we are 
assured will tend to form us in the same 
Divine Image, whilst in another world, by 



Imitation. 73 

the same process, we shall become divine, 
for then we shall see Him as He is. 



Discoverers. 

It is not to him who sees a truth and 
lets it go again, that the reward of fame is 
given; but to him, who, by experiment and 
by reasoning, renders clear to others the re- 
sult of his patient and laborious thought : 
who will not allow his truth to he dormant, 
but who raises it on the conviction of his 
fellows with as strong relief as on his own. 
Every one who has investigated any of the 
domains of truth for himself, is conscious that 
he too makes Discoveries, which, as far as 
the public are concerned, are no new Dis- 
coveries at all. If the satisfaction to his own 
mind, that he has some gift of insight, be 
not sufficient, he may, like the scholar, de- 
nounce, in his disappointment, those who 
have thought his own thoughts before him. 

And such experience, in his own case, shows 
him that many men must have quietly lived 
and died, to whom the great secrets of Nature, 
which we think exclusively the property of 



74 Discoverers. 

our age, must have been familiar : men of 
genuine insight, who, from the thoughtful 
observation of some few facts, saw the ope- 
ration of great principles which, from circum- 
stances, they kept in their own minds, or 
communicated to those who did not frilly see 
their importance. Types and paper have 
changed this. Few men willingly let die 
their Discoveries. Men consequently stand 
now on an eminence which renders their 
labours easier. The difficulty is rather with 
the distracting quantity of materials supplied 
from all sides. 



Pan. 



In explaining the fable of Pan, Lord Bacon 
gives a sketch of his broader views of Na- 
ture. 

The world was the work of the Divine 
Word acting on chaotic matter which God 
had created, and it became subject to evil, 
contradiction, and corruption, after the fall. 

Everything small and great in the world 
is subject to a fixed law. 

There is nothing insulated, or separated 
from its connection with the whole. 



Pan. 75 

Nature is like a pyramid. The basis con- 
sists of individuals and of particulars, infinite 
in number: these are collected into species, 
which are numerous : species rise into genera, 
and these are still further generalized and 
collected into Families or Races, so that all 
things tend in their ascent to one. The 
loftiest things or highest generalizations are 
"Laws," or universal ideas which belong 
to divine things ; and thus, in the ascent, 
there is a ready and near transition from 
Natural Laws to Divine Laws, or from Natural 
Philosophy to Natural Theology. The apex 
of the pyramid reaches Heaven. As Homer 
said, the chain of causes is fixed to the 
feet of Jove's throne. Nature herself is 
Biform. No species is simple, but each is 
compounded out of two, a higher and a 
lower. Man has something of the animal ; 
the animal something of the plant; the 
plant something of the inanimate — the in- 
organic. 

Next to the Word of God, this world- 
image is the voice of the Divine Power and 
Goodness. 

True natural philosophy is merely the image 
and reflection of the world. 



76 Pan. 

The true natural philosopher is the secretary 
of Nature, writing down at her dictation, and 
adding nothing of his own. 

The Intellect being calmed, and removed 
from the impressions of the senses, is some- 
times spontaneously influenced by Divine 
Things. 



Opposites. 

" Give unto me made lowly wise 
The spirit of self-sacrifice." 

WOKDSWOKTH. 

" Every man for himself." 

Alderman B. 



" Hail, holy Light ! offspring of Heaven, first born ! 
May I express thee unblamed." 

Milton. 

" The oaths with which a vulgar-minded Englishman or 
Frenchman interlards his common talk." 



Phrenologists. 

Are not Phrenologists the observers of other 
men, rather than the students of their own 
minds ? 

Do not they theorize from the actions of 



Phrenologists. 77 

others, rather than from a scrutiny of their 
own motives, thoughts, and feelings? 

Are they not the metaphysicians of the 
Understanding ? 

Are they not objective, rather than sub- 
jective ? 

Is not this the reason that the tendency of 
Phrenology is to materialism, and that the 
Phrenologists do not take into consideration 
spiritual influences, either divine or devilish? 

Is not their principal object, rather to as- 
certain the character of other men than of 
themselves? and does not this promise of 
satisfying curiosity, in so generally interesting 
a subject, explain its popularity? 

This scrutiny of the actions peculiar to 
other men, and its connexion with certain 
outward forms, if conducted on philosophical 
principles, cannot be objected to ; but its dis- 
junction from self- contemplation seems to 
me to throw some light on the classes of 
minds who cultivate it and who reject it. 



78 



Experimental Psychologists. 

There are people (men as well as women) 
who find a certain satisfaction in tormenting 
others by various indirect manoeuvres. Hints, 
stories, insinuations, flatteries obviously in- 
applicable, looks, or averted looks, are some 
of the small artillery, which, by means of 
common talk, correspondence, and ordinary 
social intercourse, are brought to bear, for 
this amiable end, on the weak places of their 
acquaintances. They remind a physiologist 
of Majendie experimentalizing on rabbits for 
his own satisfaction, or for exhibition to his 
class. He cuts down on a nerve, the exact 
position of which he knows ; he irrritates the 
nerve with a probe ; the animal either exhibits 
signs of pain, or has violent muscular con- 
tractions, according as the nerve may be 
one of motion or of sensation. "Look at 
the proof, gentlemen, of the truth of my 
assertion, in the rabbit's cries and move- 
ments." So with these social Majendies. 
They know where the nerve lies, which, 
when irritated, gives the pain or excites the 
act, and they often as coolly watch the 



Experimental Psychologists. 79 

effects of their experiment, in the pain, or 
contortions, or actions they produce, as the 
cold-blooded physiologist. But such experi- 
mental psychologists may be made of great 
use to the self-investigator. They are prime 
agents for any experiments he may wish per- 
formed on himself, for his own self-knowledge. 
By then means he may convince himself of 
his own weakness, — that the vanity, pride, 
selfishness, envy, hatred, malice, and unchari- 
tableness, which he sees so clearly in others, 
belong also to his own nature. Now, as the 
first step towards correcting a fault, is to 
know that it does exist, these practical ex- 
perimentalists may be of infinitely more ser- 
vice than they are aware. Having ascertained, 
by their means, the fact, the next step in the 
investigation is for the student to discover the 
cause. The cure lies in removing that cause. 
Now all such socially excited annoyances may 
be at once ascribed to a morbid state of the 
annoyed individual's own mind. Pride, or 
vanity, or selfishness, is its most probable 
source. The more free he is from these 
defects, the less power have this class of 
his fellow-creatures over him : for their weak- 
nesses are his instrument. The student of 



80 Experimental Psychologist. 

his own metaphysics, may take a lesson of 
such professors, in a morning call, in casual 
conversation in the street, or during the after- 
dinner's chat. These are their clinical lecture 
times. But how is he to feel towards them ? 
Seeing clearly that the motive of another is to 
give pain, deprives the attempt of its power of 
annoyance, by calling out another feeling, that 
of contempt. But this is the defensive armour 
of pride, which, " however disguised in its own 
majesty, is littleness." This is not the cure 
of a disease, but rather the substitution of one 
complaint for another. Self-knowledge is the 
rectifier. Admit the real cause of annoyance 
to be within yourself, and to be merely excited 
from without by the other, and the feeling 
following the discovery will not be mortifica- 
tion, but a wholesome sadness. The self- 
scrutinizer will (after quiet reflection) be more 
annoyed with himself than with the other. 
Pity, not the pity of contempt, but that of 
sympathy with any form of suffering, how- 
ever it originates, is the right feeling towards 
those who " blend their pleasure or their 
pride with sorrow of the meanest thing that 
feels." For who has not observed, that 
those who inflict such pain, are the most 



Experimental Psychologist. 81 

susceptible of annoyance themselves? Rest 
and peace, are in love. The farther the soul 
departs from this, its true centre, the more 
restless, unquiet, and miserable it becomes. 
Imagine an extreme case, in which this charac- 
teristic becomes entirely predominant, — a being 
whose only pleasure lies in secretly giving 
others pain, a power requiring clear insight 
and much cleverness, without an interfering 
heart, — the ideal of a devil. And is not 
the human being inspired by this spirit of 
unrest, the object of deep pity? 



Self the Centre. 

Suppose a locomotive engine had a certain 
self-consciousness, so as to be aware of its 
motions, and of its mechanical conditions, 
without understanding the object of these 
motions (its final cause), and thus made itself 
and its fellow engines the centre, without 
reference to the object of the higher being, 
man, who employs them. How perplexing 
would be its meditations on the skill and cost 
of its machinery, on the quantity of coal it 
daily consumed merely to run a certain dis- 



82 Self the Centre. 

tance, then to rest so many hours, and to ran 
again the same course, and to repeat this 
monotonous transit (with an occasional da- 
maging collision) for days, weeks, and years, 
until it was worn out and discarded. Looking 
at itself merely, how useless would be its toil, 
how apparently purposeless and vain! But 
does not man act thus, when he looks at self 
as the centre of life, as if the sole object of 
his existence was his daily work or pleasure. 
At the end of life, or of any period of his life, 
he cannot but feel, if he has regarded it in 
this light, that all is vanity. For the sake 
of earning so much daily bread for himself or 
others, he is gradually worn out, or half- worn, 
half-rusted out, and gives place to a newer 
stronger human machine, to be in its turn 
used up and cast aside. But how different 
is his view of his daily life, if he regards him- 
self as the servant of an unseen God, and 
that his use here is to work out God's great 
purposes (which he only sees as through a 
dark glass dimly) by unconditional submission 
to His laws. He differs from the locomotive 
engine in having a free will, but it is as essen- 
tial that this will must be submitted to a 
higher will than its own, as that the loco- 



Self the Centre. 83 

motive to insure its safety, should be kept 
to the rail, and to its fixed times. 



Contemplation and Action. 

We find Newton, as a boy, making work- 
ing models of wind-mills and water-clocks, 
inventing a carnage to be propelled by the 
hand of the driver, determining by experi- 
ment the best form of paper kites, framing 
his own sun-dial by marking the half-hours 
himself: a few years after at Cambridge, 
when he has taken his degree, he is shutting 
himself up in his darkened room, and watch- 
ing the effect of a prism on the rays of 
light passing through a hole cut in his 
shutter; and on finding one phenomenon 
inexplicable by the optical theories of his 
day, forming new hypotheses, and testing 
them by one experiment after another, until 
he had arrived at the great truth, that fight 
is not homogeneous, but consists of rays 
of. various degrees of refrangibility. Next, 
he is grinding hyperbolic lenses, and at the 
time when his mind is occupied with his 
method of fluxions, and the idea of gravita- 



84 Contemplation and Action. 

tion is dawning on him, he is employed in 
the hard mechanical labour of constructing 
a new kind of telescope. From his very 
boyhood he was a practical mechanic, and a 
successful one, for his water-clocks told the 
hour, his wind-mills ground corn, and his 
reflecting telescope showed him Jupiter's 
Satellites, and was commended by Sir Chris- 
topher Wren. 

His was a mind capable of the loftiest con- 
templation, but stooping to the humblest me- 
chanical work. And this has been the secret 
of the advancement made by the moderns 
in real science. Men of the most elevated 
powers of thought have applied themselves 
to the minute observation of things, and have 
tested their ideas by laborious experiments. 
They have thus attained to the knowledge of 
laws of the highest kind, by not neglecting 
the lowliest means. 

Christianity teaches the same lesson. He 
that would attain the highest elevation of 
mind, must do so by stooping to perform the 
lowliest acts. Christ washed his disciples' 
feet, and told them that he who would be the 
highest amongst them must be their slave. 

The oriental philosophers, who recognised 



Contemplation and Action. 85 

the importance of contemplation, had ima- 
gined that a life without action, but of pure 
contemplation, was the highest; but Christ 
taught that the only means of high contem- 
plation was by conjoining it with the practice 
of the humblest actions. The same principle 
which Bacon proclaimed to be the sole method 
of advancing physical science, had been an- 
nounced by our Lord as the sine qua non of 
moral advancement. Practise — Work — Do — 
if you would Know, is the rule in both cases. 

Be above nothing manual and mechanical, 
if pursuing the highest laws of science. 

Be above no service to your fellow-men, 
however humble, if you are aiming after the 
highest moral life. 

For the one is necessary to the other. 

Action is essential to contemplation; and 
contemplation to action, both in physical and 
moral science. 



Sundays. 

.How is it that many popular writers, who 
sympathise with the poorer classes, who seem 
to have their good at heart, and consider 
that good to depend very much on intellectual 



86 Sundays. 

progress, wish to undermine the strict and 
even Judaical observance of Sunday? What 
framer of a Utopia could dream of more, 
than, in a state of things requiring the hard 
toil of the many as a condition of existence, 
yet still a devotion of one whole day in seven 
to the sole culture of mental philosophy, from 
a text-book which contains the purest and 
loftiest principles of ethics, set forth ima- 
ginatively, metaphysically, practically, affec- 
tionately, — in poetry, maxims, philosophical 
reasoning, — illustrated in parables, anecdotes, 
biographies, — in the history of the oldest na- 
tion, — and, finally, in the example of a pure 
and perfect life? and besides all this, that 
the Word itself, rightly used under certain 
conditions which all may fulfil, should be the 
means of giving the power of acting up to 
this knowledge, and thus producing a nation 
of working-men with pure, unselfish, unsen- 
sual hearts and refined minds, bent on ap- 
proaching a glorious ideal standard ? For this 
is the Idea of the Sunday by which it should 
be judged. 

There is another argument, which is, to 
my own mind, very conclusive. Have I, or 
has any one, when looking back at life, ever 



Sundays. 87 

regretted that any number of Sundays had 
been kept even with puritanical strictness ? 
Though such observance was attended by self- 
denial, and even by the irksome restraint of 
others, was it not, when viewed soberly from 
a distance, just like all self-denial and disci- 
pline, acknowledged by the self-examiner to 
have been of more use to the character, than 
if the day had been one of amusement ? "To 
scorn delights and live laborious days " is 
the very characteristic of the man we respect ; 
and yet we would train a nation of men by 
another rule, expecting to rear masculine 
intellects on the soft diet of a disguised 

Epicureanism. 

— ♦- — 

Systematizing Divines. 

Are not the errors of many German phi- 
losophers, and of really earnest men, owing 
to their belief that man, by his own faculties, 
can form, out of the principles and facts sup- 
plied by the Bible, his own consciousness and 
experience, and the history of mankind, a 
consistent religious system, — one that shall 
include all the facts, and explain their rela- 
tions ? 



88 Systematizing Divines. 

The history of physical science shows the 
fallacy of such expectations. The self-same 
error has prevailed amongst the cultivators 
of science. But the attempt is now given 
up as impossible. No coherent system of 
Nature is possible in the present state of our 
faculties and acquirements. We cannot as 
yet overlook and understand the universe as 
a whole ; and it is not unreasonable to believe 
that our view of it morally must be as frag- 
mentary as it is physically ; owing to the same 
cause, the limitation of our faculties. 

Such rationalists are anti-Baconians, — men 
who attempt to generalize without the necessary 
particulars. Sterling, at one period of his life 
(when immersed in the reading of German 
philosophers, poets, and rationalistic divines), 
thought that a new theological system, of a 
broader kind than the present, was essential 
for young England. But, shortly before his 
death, he said that he had gained but little 
good from what he had heard or read of 
theology, but "what gives me the greatest 
comfort, are these words in the Lord's Prayer, 
' Thy will be done." " This latter view is as 
much in the spirit of true science, as of true 
religion. It is only the well-trained scientific 



Systematizing Divines. . 89 

mind, which sees that the explanation of phy- 
sical facts is usually far inferior in importance 
to the facts themselves ; and that a large sys- 
tem, however whole and sound in appearance, 
is but the attempt of the human mind to com- 
plete, what, after all, is only partially known. 
One individual gets up a branch of physical 
science from books ; and, after having mastered 
them, he imagines that he has a complete 
knowledge of the subject. But let the same 
investigator go to Nature, with the light of 
this previous knowledge, and he will find how 
deep the subject is, how incomplete is this 
knowledge after all, how piecemeal, how un- 
connected ! If he is fortunate enough to make 
one discovery, this leads him to deeper views, 
which baffle him still more ; and he sees that 
the aphorism of the schoolmen, that " all 
things rest on mystery," is as applicable to 
his own branch of science, as to any specu- 
lative inquiries which engaged the subtle in- 
tellects of the Middle Ages. The more deeply 
skilled a physical philosopher becomes in ex- 
perimental researches on any branch of science, 
the more cautious he is in any of his attempts 
to systematize largely. Physical science may 
here instruct theologians. The Almighty has 



90 Systematizing Divines. 

revealed no complete system of religion. 
Christ himself taught by aphorisms, and by 
his actions. There is a close analogy here 
between our knowledge of God's works and 
his word. And is it an easier matter for the 
human mind to frame a true system from His 
word, than from his works ? Such a theo- 
logical system may be woven by an ingenious 
and speculative mind : it may have the out- 
ward appearance of conclusiveness and con- 
sistency, but will it bear the test of experience? 
Will not, after all, the simple aphorism, "Thy 
will be done," be more satisfactory to all, than 
the completest system of Christian Philosophy, 
at the approach of death, at that period when 
the soundness of our religious theories may be 
practically tested. 

On this subject the teachings of physical 
science seem very valuable. It is the partly 
informed, the immature scientific mind which 
believes in the Vestiges of the Natural History 
of Creation, or in any such bold generalizations. 
The real interpreter of Nature estimates them 
at their worth : as the romance of science, 
the ingenious air-castles of a scientific book- 
worm, or the day-dreams of an imaginative 
mind, which has chosen science instead of 



Systematizing Divines. - 91 

history. Nor will a mind trained by physical 
science be easily enamoured with new systems 
of theology, nor consider that a new and 
broader system is a want of the age which 
must be supplied. It may be a want of that 
stage of the intellect, which longs for more 
than the conditions of human nature allow, 
and will not humbly acknowledge the limi- 
tations of this earthly period of existence; and 
consequently it will be a want of all ages. But 
the well- disciplined mind will see that what 
is most needful now, is the recognition that 
Christianity is a living principle or power, 
not a mere systematic scheme for explaining 
that principle or power. And the analogy of 
science, especially of physiological science, 
leads the natural philosopher to discriminate 
at once between that new life, which is the 
essence of Christianity, known by certain out- 
ward actions and inward convictions, and the 
systematic explanation of the phenomena; 
for he recognises life as an inward power 
made known by certain actions, without being 
able to form a consistent theory of life, which 
would explain the due relation and laws of 
all the powers which are included in the term. 
He does not disbelieve in the existence of that 



92 Systematizing Divines. 

whole which he names life, because he can- 
not explain it, — he merely rejects expla- 
nations founded on hasty generalizations. 
And the observation and experiments of the 
physiologist may lead him, by analogy, 
nearer to the truth of Christianity, and thus 
be of more real assistance to his biblical 
studies, than the reading of the boldest spe- 
culative divine, or all-explaining clearly- 
systematizing German philosopher. 



Dependence. 

I am standing on the earth, the earth rests 
on nothing, but revolves in its elliptical orbit 
through infinite space, with a velocity, the 
law of which has been calculated by Newton, 
but by a force, of the nature of which Newton 
confessed that he was wholly ignorant. All 
that is known of natural forces is that one 
can be traced into another, that no physical 
force is newly-created, only changed ; and we 
must at last come to the First Mover, the 
actual producer of force. Modern science 
confirms Aristotle, when he said, "All that 
is in motion refers us to a Mover ; and it 



Dependence. 93 

were but an endless adjournment of causes, 
were there not a primary immoveable Mover." 
Thus science leads to the knowledge of a 
Being exerting his originating Power, — his 
Will, — and, standing on this earth, I am 
dependent on this Power as my only security 
against destruction. This Power is the ground, 
the real foundation, of the physical stability 
of the earth, and consequently of my own 
existence. Science gives no countenance to 
the philosophical hypothesis, that God has 
made a world with certain laws, and stands 
apart merely watching its progress. She can 
only conceive the Creator, as keeping up the 
various forces of nature, by a constant exercise 
of his self-originating power. The text that 
not a sparrow falls to the ground without the 
power of God, is in literal accordance with 
the teachings of modern physical science. 
Science and Christianity agree, when the latter 
teaches that God is not a mere Thought, or 
Intelligence, but a Person, on whose voluntary 
power we rest as literally as a babe in its 
mother's arms. 



94 



E CCELO DESCENDIT yvudt ffzuvrov. 

By what light can a man see himself cor- 
rectly? By a light which is not knowledge, 
but which is life, — which is being — a life 
which cannot be implanted in us by any form 
of instruction, — which exists latent in all, — 
which may be excited from without by teach- 
ing, just as heat may excite to action the 
latent life of an egg, which life existed before 
the outward appliance of warmth. This in- 
ward principle of life we derive from Christ, 
who was the Light which hghteth every man 
that cometh into the world. He is the Source 
of this superadded life : from Him it emanates 
and flows on. He is the centre of this radiating 
living power, and those actuated by it make 
up that spiritual unity, the Catholic Church. 
Until this new life is awakened in a man, he is 
ignorant of himself; by this life he feels his 
true condition, — he knows himself. Now self- 
knowledge is an essential branch of mental 
cultivation; and, as it is necessary for the 
investigator of physical science to have the 
most perfect mental instrument, — Christianity, 



E C(ELO DESCENDIT yvudi ffiavrov. 95 

by perfecting this instrument, becomes the 
helpmate of true science. 



The Open Secret. 

The question must often be asked, "Why 
has not God revealed himself so immediately 
to man, that he can have no ground for doubt? 
If there be a living personal God, why is he not 
apparent?" But this hiding of himself, and 
only showing himself by his works, is in strict 
analogy with the conditions of all our know- 
ledge. Nature, as Goethe said, "is an open 
secret," — open to all and hidden from all, and 
only to be discovered by search. 

The highest branch of knowledge is the 
investigation of those invisible causes of mo- 
tion, the imponderable agents. The discovery 
of their laws, through the observation of their 
effects on matter, is the hardest task to which 
the human mind can apply itself; requiring 
such unremitting and exhausting mental toil, 
that the discovery of one law nearly drove 
Newton mad. Such continuous thought it cost 
him, that he sometimes forgot whether he had 
eaten his meal or had put on all his clothes. 



96 The Open Secret. 

It prevented his sleep, and at last it worked 
him up to such a pitch of nervous excitement, 
that he was compelled (to save himself from 
madness) to give up the calculation to another, 
just before he had completed it. God, for his 
own good purposes, has made this world an 
open secret. He has willed that none of our 
knowledge of outward nature should be at- 
tained without strenuous intellectual exertion. 
He has also hidden Himself, — perhaps in pity 
to our weakness ; for, if the anticipation of the 
discovery of one of his laws was too much for 
the equanimity of a Newton, — if it nearly 
upset the clearest, strongest English intellect, 
— what might not be the immediate effect of 
any more direct exhibition of the Author of 
that law ? 

God has revealed Himself morally by a 
verbal revelation : but a similar condition 
applies to our acquisition of this spiritual 
knowledge, as to our acquirement of natural 
knowledge. The Bible is a book of mere 
words, demanding, for its honest and compre- 
hensive study, as much attention and labor- 
ious experiment as is required to comprehend 
natural science. No one can really under- 
stand chemistry unless he practises the ex- 



The Open Secret. 97 

periments himself, as well as studies chemical 
books. So with Christian science : no one 
man understands the Bible, unless he practises 
experimentally the duties it prescribes, as well 
as studies its words and himself. Then only 
does the meaning of the words become clear ; 
and this clearness increases, in proportion to 
the time he spends, and the pains he takes, 
in action joined with contemplation. 



The Invisible. 

Christianity inculcates the importance of 
the Unseen. In teaching us that God is a 
Spirit, and they that worship Him must wor- 
ship Him in spirit : that this material world 
is the outward sign of an invisible Maker, 
revealing His power and wisdom : that the 
object of our existence here is to discipline 
us for an existence hereafter, — it enforces the 
truth that the Invisible is of higher import 
than the visible. It is therefore our duty 
earnestly to cultivate that power of the mind 
which enables us to look forward to the 
Unseen. And as the Invisible is higher than 
the visible, the mental faculty which recog- 



98 The Invisible. 

nises the Invisible must be higher than that 
which recognises and judges mere objects of 
sense. Physical science enforces the same 
lesson. The highest physical knowledge is the 
knowledge of causes. Now the causes of all 
physical changes are unseen forces. The effects 
are seen by certain movements of matter, but 
the power moving this matter, whether gra- 
vitation, electricity, magnetism, heat, sound, 
chemical affinity, is unseen. The object of 
the highest science is the discovery of the 
laws or rules of action of these invisible forces; 
and it is essential that those who would at- 
tempt to investigate the laws of force, should 
first attain the power of conceiving force 
abstractedly from the matter it moves. The 
physical philosopher must therefore, like the 
Christian philosopher, regard the unseen as 
the highest, and cultivate that power of abs- 
traction, to which, in spiritual science, Faith 
is analogous. The spiritual culture which 
Christianity enforces being, therefore, of the 
same kind as that demanded by the highest 
science, it may be predicted with absolute 
certainty, that the highest science will always 
be found among that people who cultivate the 
highest Christian life : and nothing is more 



The Invisible. 99 

reasonable than the fact, that the discoverers 
of laws have been eminently Christian men. 
The apparent contradiction, that many physi- 
cal cultivators have been sceptical, has been 
clearly explained by Dr. Whewell. The inductive 
minds are the discoverers of Laws. Such were 
the minds of Kepler, Galileo, Newton. Such 
men were religious. Deductive minds trace 
the consequences of the laws discovered by 
the others, and of these some have been scep- 
tical. Now it is most reasonable to believe, 
that those who discover laws, should be di- 
rectly led to the cause of these laws, the 
invisible Lawgiver : whilst the lower order of 
mind, which receives the discovery, and applies 
it or traces its consequences, may regard the 
discoverer as a god, and not look beyond the 
human. Thus Lagrange, a deductive mind, 
" a modern mathematician of transcendant 
genius, was in the habit of saying, in his 
aspirations after future fame, that Newton was 
fortunate in having had the system of the 
world for his problem, since its theory could 
be discovered once only. But Newton himself 
appears to have had no such persuasion that 
the problem he had solved was unique and 
final ; he laboured to reduce gravity to some 

F 2 



100 The Invisible. 

higher law, and the forces of other physical 
operations to an analogy with those of gravity, 
and declared that all these were but a step in 
our advance towards a first Cause."* 

The evidence which Dr. Whewell has col- 
lected, shows that the discoverers of laws, the 
men of original genius, of creative power 
in the highest sciences, have been deeply 
religious. In this age, when there seems to 
be a tacit agreement that science should be 
separated from religion altogether, it is re- 
freshing to read the manly robust avowal 
of these old intellectual giants, of their reli- 
gious feelings and faith, in the midst of their 
scientific writings. Galileo and Copernicus, 
Kepler and Newton, Pascal, Boyle, Harvey, 
Sydenham, Bacon, pre-eminently acknowledge 
the wisdom and power of God, with a hum- 
ble appreciation of their own powers and 
wisdom. 

And who have been the sceptical philoso- 
phers, whose irreligious views have brought 
disrepute on science? Their number, Dr. 
Whewell thinks, is exaggerated, and they have 
been persons who have cultivated to excess, 
and without a due balance, their mathematical 
* Bridgewater Treatise, p. 342. 



The Invisible. 101 

or logical powers. These deductive reasoners, 
who have traced the consequences of laws by 
means of mathematical calculations, which 
require, undoubtedly, great intellectual ability, 
precision, and application, are apt to become 
one-sided. " If, therefore, the mathematical 
philosopher dwells in his own light and 
pleasant land of deductive reasoning, till 
he turns with disgust from all the specula- 
tions, necessarily less clear and conclusive, 
in which his imagination, his practical facul- 
ties, his moral sense, his capacity of religious 
hope and belief, are to be called into action, 
he becomes, more than common men, liable 
to miss the roads to truths of extreme 
consequence." * 

If mere mathematicians and logicians are oc- 
casionally sceptical, they furnish no argument 
against the position, that the cultivation of 
high science and of the Christian life usually 
co-exist. For these sceptics are not discover- 
ers at all. Superadded to the mathematical 
faculty, there must be in the discoverer a 
higher power of insight. Newton had this. 
He caught sight of the law of universal gra- 
vitation by one power, he proved it and traced 

* Bridgewater Treatise, p. 338. 



102 The Invisible. 

it to its consequences by mathematics, " and 
with a rapidity, a dexterity, a beauty of ma- 
thematical reasoning which no other person 
could approach." The most consummate 
mathematical " skill may accompany, and be 
auxiliary to the most earnest piety, as it often 
has been." * 

The scepticism of mere mathematicians, 
then, must rather be regarded as a proof of a 
want of right balance in their mental powers; 
and, if so, such minds would have been im- 
proved for science by Christianity, by deve- 
loping faculties which they had never used, 
and thus giving more completeness to their 
mental organ. 

Fixed Ideas. 

Men who are earnestly bent on any scien- 
tific investigation, or in carrying out any active 
scheme, political, benevolent, or personal, often 
give up their whole minds to it for a certain 
time. It becomes the fixed idea for months or 
years. The routine business of life is carried 
on, but the mind returns to the one subject 
which interests it in all its spare moments. 

* Bridgewater Treatise, p. 341. 



Fixed Ideas. 103 

And much real progress is made in this way. 
In self-discipline, might it not be as well to 
follow a similar plan. Let one of the faults 
which most prominently rises before the intro- 
verted eye of the self-inspector be made the 
chief object of moral improvement for a certain 
fixed time. Endeavour to be unselfish for six 
weeks. Give half a year to the cure of wan- 
dering thoughts. Resist indulgence in day- 
dreams for a month. Cultivate entire purity 
of thought and feeling as the chief object for 
several weeks. Practise "to listen and dis- 
course for others' good" for a year. Let each 
choose for the object of this silent struggle 
that error of which he is most conscious. 

Let him, however, be silent. The wrestling 
is with an unseen enemy, in a solitary chamber, 
by an invisible Power. Its whole nature indi- 
cates its secret character. Let no other know 
that such a contest is going on. If it must 
be written about, let it be on a loose sheet 
of paper, which is to be thrust immediately 
afterwards in the fire ; or vanity, or pride, 
or some other form of weakness, will prevent 
that stern self-justice which is the one needful 
thing ; and the diarist may, like Ananias and 
Sapphira, keep back part of the sum which 



104 Fixed Ideas. 

his diary professes to state, and by omission 
the balance-sheet is falsified. But, above all 
things, let him not whisper of his success. 
How often does an observer of his own moral 
health find that he is affected with a spiritual 
cold, immediately after having complacently 
talked to another of his freedom from such 
a visitation. The effects of such discipline will 
be visible to others, though as undiscernible to 
the individual as his own growth. Spiritual 
as well as bodily growth is a silent operation. 



True Nobility. 

As bodies differ, so souls differ. As one 
is born with a more beautiful body, so another 
is born with a more beautiful soul. Without 
any striving of her own, without any especial 
self-culture, unconsciously, freely, intuitively, 
the soul of one is and grows fairer, purer, 
higher, lovelier than her coevals. The body 
is more evidently the material organ of the 
Divine, the temple of God. His image is more 
clearly revealed. Such souls constitute the 
true nobility. Nobility consists not in wealth ; 
for how can what is vile produce what is 



True Nobility. IOo 

noble? It consists not in birth; otherwise 
all must be noble or all must be base ; but 
it consists in that beauty of the soul, which 
is the especial gift of God. 

Such is Dante's argument.* He viewed 
nobility as a grace implanted by God himself, 
in those souls which are by nature the most 
beautifully constituted ; and the signs of this 
nobility he has described in their different 
stages of life. 

In her first age, the noble soul is gentle, 
obedient, and alive to shame, and careful to 
improve the beauty of her bodily frame with 
all accomplishments. 

In youth, she is temperate and resolute, 
full of love and praise of courtesy, placing her 
sole delight in loyalty. 

In dechning age, she is prudent and just, 
yet known for her bounty and generosity, 
and joys within herself to listen and to speak 
of the good of others. 

And in the fourth and remaining portion of 
her life, she is re-espoused to God, contem- 
plating the end which is at hand, and blessing 
all the seasons that are past. 

* From Lyall's translation of the third Canzone of the 
Convito of Dante. 



106 True Nobility. 

"Reflect, now," added Dante, "how the 
many are deceived." 



Hero-worship. 

Mr. Carlyle writes on Hero-worship, and 
worships the heroic in human character : his 
Heroism being that energy of will, which, 
united to a powerful intellect capable of plan- 
ning a career, carries it out. Milton, Crom- 
well's Latin secretary, recognised the existence 

" Of deeds 
Above heroic, though in secret done, 
And unrecorded left through many an age :" 

one of which was the unseen and successful 
resistance to the temptations of pride and 
ambition. 

In the soliloquy in which he makes Christ 
revolve the thoughts of his early youth, he 
says His spirit aspired not only to promote 
all truth, all righteous things, but 

" Victorious deeds 
Flamed in my heart, heroic acts, ere while 
To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke, 
Then to subdue and quell o'er all the earth 
Brute violence and proud tyrannic power, 
Till truth were freed, and equity restored." 



Hero-worship. ' 107 

Yet He 

"Held it more humane, more heavenly, first, 
By winning words to conquer willing hearts, 
And make persuasion do the work of fear. 
At least to try, and teach the erring soul 
Not wilfully misdoing, not unware 
Misled : the stubborn only to subdue." 



Demonology. 

The common criticism on the battles in 
the "Paradise Lost," that there can be no 
great interest in a contest which the reader 
knows must end in one way, is true enough ; 
and if there is any analogy between the pre- 
sent and the past, the contest between good 
and evil must have been of a much more 
refined and deeper kind, than one of mere 
physical force, like human war. 

Satan and his angels are now counter- 
acting God in every creature he has made, 
by fraud, and craft, and management : by 
the most artful persuasions addressed to the 
senses of the mere sensual man, to the fancy 
of the imaginative, to the understanding of 
the man of common sense, that happiness is 
to be attained by other means than those laid 



108 Demonology. 

down by God's laws . And in how few instances 
are these suggestions unsuccessful, for a time. 
But the power of God is shown by so over- 
ruling all, that these very temptations, and 
the sins resulting from them, are the means, 
through utter disappointment and failure, of 
bringing the deceived back to that uncondi- 
tional submission to the laws of God which 
he requires. This is a vengeance even more 
refined than the evil scheme itself. Let Satan 
manage as he will, let him use all his subtlety, 
his guile, his power of plausible deception, 
with success, on beings still endowed with free 
wills, and in the end those very means will 
individually, and naturally, and universally, 
bring about God's purpose of building up a 
race of angels, whose sole happiness shall con- 
sist in obeying Him. 

A thoughtful man, whom time and failures 
have made somewhat wiser, sees certain pro- 
minent faults in a younger man, which he 
feels cannot be corrected, unless by the stern 
sharp unpitying surgery of actual life. And 
care, disappointment, anxiety, ill-health, failure 
of schemes, perhaps bankruptcy and ruin, he 
foresees will be remedial — will be the very 
best circumstances which could happen, in 



Demonology. 109 

subduing a will which nothing less decided 
would conquer. This conviction is founded 
on his own experience and reflections. To a 
limited extent he sees into the ways of God 
to man, and he feels that they are just and 
right. And he cannot go wrong, in general- 
izing from his own experience, and in viewing 
sorrow and misery as evils, through which he 
and others must pass, in order to attain solid 
good. He does not say evil is good, but that 
the Source of all goodness has permitted it, 
in order to bring out of it true happiness to 
his creatures — possibly a ^higher kind of 
happiness than could be attained in any 
other way. 

But it is also apparent, that there are in- 
stances in which sorrow, and evil, and sin, 
are not apparently curative. Are there not 
individuals whom disappointment embitters 
and makes malignant ? — who are not im- 
proved by sickness, sorrow, care, and the 
evils of life, but who are made more evil, 
more selfish, more restless, more loveless, 
and who die as they have lived? Revelation 
tells us that they descend to a state of exist- 
ence where their dispositions are fixed. They 
become not angels of light, but angels of 



110 Demonology. 

darkness. Now, if we admit that there are 
fallen angels, who have fallen through dis- 
obedience, it is reasonable to believe that 
men who live a life of disobedience to the 
will of God, and are not improved by those 
sufferings here, which are consequent on op- 
posing the laws of the Supreme, who make 
all this discipline the stepping-stones to more 
disobedience; that they who exhibit such in- 
corrigibility should be permitted to follow the 
bent of their own wills, and should experience, 
in another state of being, the full consequences 
of a life regulated by self, and not by a higher 
law, and thus to become devils in their own 
chosen domain. For a devil is a spirit having 
self for its centre, carrying out its own selfish 
purposes without regard to others. For self 
is the opposite to love, where the happiness 
is placed beyond self, in God and in his crea- 
tures. The demoniac love is the love of 
another for the pleasure that other gives self. 
Hence disappointment and hate are its attend- 
ants ; and that virtue, which is nearest the 
Divine, becomes the fruitful parent of sensuality, 
gross or refined, of fierce passions, malignant 
vices, and foul crimes. Only study one selfish 
human being, who generally, in little things as 



Demoxology. Ill 

well as in great, sacrifices others to himself; 
only let each study the selfish moments and 
phases of his own heart, and then imagine an 
existence of such self-seeking, in which it is 
the law. For there is no pure selfishness in 
human beings ; they have the interfering living 
instincts, and the god -like nature shining 
through its disfigurement. A man must either 
be so degraded as to be hardly human, — 
or of such intellectual power as to be able to 
subdue the living sympathies of his body, if he 
approaches pure selfishness. He must be a 
Buonaparte, with the stern stoicism of an 
absolute will, to carry out projects of personal 
ambition without any obstacle from the heart. 
The flesh and blood impede the head-schemes 
of feebler men. But imagine a world of selfish 
spirits, with no bodily fleshly sympathies to 
mitigate their intellectual hardness, who have 
no pity and no love, and yet have all the clear- 
ness of understanding, the cunning, the craft, 
the management, the diplomacy, of great in- 
tellectual capacity, with the pure resolve to 
attain their own ends totally regardless of 
others, and these ends mere personal gratifi- 
cation, and you have a hell. Here then is 
a vengeance still more terrible than mere 



112 Demonology. 

defeat. For partial victory has, by adding to 
the number of this kingdom, increased in 
the same proportion its misery. 



On Diabolical Possession. 

There is a striking thought of William 
Law's (perhaps borrowed from Jacob Boehmen, 
from whom he gained many of his thoughts), 
which seems to throw some light on that mys- 
terious request to Christ, of the evil spirits 
who had possessed the two Gadarenes, that 
when ejected they might enter the bodies of 
swine. Devils are fallen angels : angels, who, 
revolting against the supremacy of God, were 
left to their own will; to the fiery strength 
of their will, deprived of the love, and joy, and 
peace, and goodness, which can alone come 
from God. They have, therefore, no ground 
to rest on but themselves. Man is also a 
fallen spirit, like a devil ; but he is a fallen 
spirit in a human body, made of earth, and 
placed on the earth, and capable of getting 
from earth all the pleasures which sensation 
affords. He thus can, in a measure, forget 
himself in the enjoyments of sense. And it 



On Diabolical Possession. 113 

is only at his death, when he loses this earthly 
body, that he has (if he has rejected the means 
of restoration), like the evil spirits, no ground 
of rest or of pleasure out of himself. Thus, 
any earthly body is better than none for a 
fallen spirit. The animal sensualities of a pig 
may enable a devil to forget himself. And 
does this not render a reason for the fact, 
that evil spirits who enter men, and are the 
instigators and sharers with them, of sensual 
wickedness, were averse to their ejection. 
They were escaping from themselves, from 
their unmixed spiritual misery. 

No rest, no peace, no comfort, no hope of 
a better condition, without any of that outward 
occupation, of active pleasures, or work, or 
of enjoyments from food or drink, or from 
the higher sensations of the eye and ear, to 
divert from self, may be the condition of one 
evil spirit : and this hopeless, restless misery 
increased by companionship with others in the 
same plight. And, added to all, none but 
selfish moral qualities, — envy, hatred, ma- 
lignity, — no love, no generosity, no tenderness, 
no benevolence; every one for himself, without 
God for all; and this eternal, — and this is Hell. 
That a spirit in such a plight should be always 



114 On Diabolical Possession. 

seeking a human body, wherein he might for 
the time drown this intensely wretched self- 
consciousness ; — and that wicked Insanity, and 
very much of that brilliant evil, which, from 
its power over others, seems superhuman, are 
effects of such a union, is most probable. 



The Pre-existence of the Soul. 

That thoughtful men, whose speculations 
were not directed and limited by a Revelation 
from God in which they believed, should have 
theorized on their existence previously to this 
life, is very natural. The meditative mind, 
turned in upon itself,, seeks with unappeasable 
craving to understand, not only whither it is 
going, but whence it came. In our more 
mechanical age, the question is as to the pre- 
existence of our bodies ; and the restless 
theorizer makes out, to his own satisfaction, 
that the human body has commenced as the 
simple green scum on stagnant waters, and, 
passing on through all the lower forms of life, 
has ended after a succession of ages in man. 
In a more metaphysical age the question was, 
How did my soul commence ? If I am im- 



The Pke-existence of the Soul. 115 

mortal, must I not have lived from everlasting ? 
Pressed with such a thought, feeling his rest- 
lessness and dissatisfaction here, chafing at 
the tyranny of his earthly body over his soul, 
estimating the emptiness of earthly honours, 
the transient and unsatisfactory pleasure of 
earth's best delights, the difference between 
his own aspirations and convictions of what 
is best and highest, and the general apprecia- 
tion of men founded on mere appearances, — 
feeling a want which nothing here satisfies, 
a void which nothing here fills, a capacity for 
happiness which all experience proves to him 
is unattainable, with the solemn certainty that 
he is immortal, and with all analogies pressing 
into his soul the conviction that his condition 
hereafter must be influenced by his conduct 
here, — with such thoughts, and with the dimly 
transmitted traditions of an early revelation, 
we cannot wonder at a Pythagorean's theoriz- 
ing after the following manner: — "Man falleth 
from his happy state, by being a fugitive, 
apostate, and wanderer from God, actuated by 
a certain mad and irrational strife, or conten- 
tion. But he ascends again, and recovers his 
former state, if he declines and avoids these 
earthly things, and despises this unpleasant 



116 The Pre- existence op the Soul. 

and wretched place, where murder, and wrath, 
and a troop of all other mischiefs reign. Into 
which place, they who fall, wander up and 
down through the field of Ate and darkness. 
But the desire of him that flees from this field 
of Ate, carries him on towards the field of 
truth; which the soul at first relinquishing, 
and losing its wings, fell down into this earthly 
body, deprived of its happy life." * 

Some Christians, indeed, have not thought 
that this belief in the pre-existence of the 
soul, was contrary to their faith. Synesius, 
though a Christian (says Cudworth), yet, hav- 
ing been educated in this Philosophy, could 
not be induced, by the hopes of a bishopric, 
to stifle, or dissemble, this sentiment of his 
mind. " I shall never be persuaded to think 
my soul to be younger than my body." And 
part of the sublimest modern ode, by the 
most deeply philosophic christian poet of our 
own age, expresses the same conviction. 

Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar ; 

* Hierocles, In Aurea Pythagorse Carmina, p. 186, 
translated by Cudworth, vol. i. p. 114. Int. Syst. 



The Pre-existence of the Soul. 117 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home. ] 



Plato's Trinity. 

Plato,* in leading his disciples onward to 
the gradual comprehension of those mighty- 
speculations which filled his own soul, began 
with proving a Psyche, or soul of the uni- 
verse, a self-moving principle, the cause of 
all that motion which is in the world. 

Above this self-moving Psyche, he asserts 
an immoveable Nous, or intellect, which was 
the architectural Framer of the whole world. 
And lastly, above this multiform Intellect, 
there is one most simple and most absolutely 
perfect Being, which, above power and intel- 
lect, is Goodness (to ayocQov). 

The o0goc comprehends all these three 
Principles, which form the Platonic Trinity.f 

\ Wordsworth's Ode. Intimations of Immortality from 
Recollections of early Childhood. 

* Cudworth, vol. ii. p. 301. 

\ " We find (says Lord Bacon) as far as credit may 
be given to the celestial hierarchy of the supposed Dio- 
nysius, the Areopagite, the first place is given to the 



118 Plato's Trinity. 

The first or lowest is Power, the second 
Intellect, the third Goodness. The first 
might be illustrated by the physical forces 
of gravitation, electricity, heat, light, and 
magnetism, as examples, in our limited ex- 
aminations of simple power. The second 
may be exemplified by Life, or power in- 
cluding design, and therefore Power united 
with Intellect. Man is an example of the 
highest. He alone has Goodness, which, 
however, requires the two others, Power 
and Intellect, for its manifestation. Thus 
man is the image of God. This ro ccyadoy, 
this highest emanation of the Divine Power, 
says Plato, is to our intellect, what the sun 
is to our sense of sight. By the rays of 
the sun, we see outward things ; by the 
light of the Divine Intellect, we see truth. 

angels of love, termed seraphim ; the second, to angels 
of light, called cheruhim ; and the third and following 
places to thrones, principalities, and the rest, which are 
all angels of power and ministry." 

This gradation of angelic natures answers to the Platonic 
Trinity, the seraphim to Goodness ; the cherubim to In- 
tellect, the thrones and principalities to Power. 

Lord Bacon says, " In the work of creation we see a 
double emanation of virtue from God, the one relating 
more properly to Power, the other to Wisdom." 



Plato's Trinity, 119 

Our reason is to this heavenly light, what 
our eyes are to light. The sun's rays are 
not the sight, but the cause of it. The 
Divine Intellect, is not the reason (the 
" lumen siccum"), but the cause of it. The 
rays of the sun are not the sun itself, but 
they are sun-like. This Divine Light, is not 
the Deity, but it is God-like, it is an ema- 
nation from him. 

To give free access to this Divine Light, 
must be the chief object of all real mental 
culture. To clear the mind, all the idols 
of the tribe, of the den, of the market, and 
of the theatre, — -the prejudices of the indi- 
vidual, of society, and of science, must be 
cast out. As our eye is a well- contrived 
optical instrument for the transmission of the 
sun's rays, so is our mind contrived to receive 
the Divine light of reason ; and as it is neces- 
sary that the fluids of the eye and the cornea 
should be transparent, in order that the sun's 
rays may so fall upon the retina, as to form 
a perfect picture of the outward world in 
the eye's dark chamber, so is it necessary 
that our mind's purity should not be soiled 
by errors of sensual inclinations or intellec- 
tual prejudices, that it may allow the Divine 



120 Plato's Trinity. 

light to fall into it, and make it capable 
of the discovery of truth. The vulgar phi- 
losophy of the day is, that patient obser- 
vation and concentration on one object are 
all that is necessary to discover new truths : 
Bacon expressed a higher doctrine. He re- 
cognized that patient observation was neces- 
sary, but that, unless the mind has been 
cleared of its idols, it looks at the object 
through a dull and distorted glass ; and the 
more patiently the observer toils, the more 
surely does he mistake the defects of his 
own instrument for the outward truths of 
science. Bacon's method consisted of two 
parts : the first, to clear the mind of its 
unevenness, irregularities, and cloudiness; and 
the second, to keep it fixed on facts, and, 
aided by experiment, to extract the causes 
of these facts, and, having discovered them, 
to apply the knowledge to the uses of man- 
kind. 

"The light of the understanding (says 
Bacon) is not a dry or pure light, but 
drenched in the will and affections." 



121 



Spiritual Science. 

The man who would criticise or deny the 
conclusions of a mathematician, or of a phy- 
siologist, or a geologist, without previously 
mastering mathematics, physiology, or geology, 
is set down as a weak person. And yet edu- 
cated men discuss and criticise, and even deny, 
the principles of spiritual religion, without 
having attempted their study according to 
its prescribed conditions. For this spiritual 
science demands no more from the student 
than any other. No man can be an anato- 
mist without dissecting, nor a chemist without 
experimentalizing, nor a physician without 
attending the sick. Mere contemplation with- 
out action will not make a chemist, an 
anatomist, nor a physician. Both must be 
joined. The ascertained truths of the science 
must be first learned, the student believing 
that he is being instructed in what is true. 
He must afterwards make these acquirements 
the subject of his own reflection, and test 
their value by actual experiment. 

Unless he has submitted to this double 
education he is not able to judge if the 

G 



122 Spiritual Science. 

principles of any science are true, or how 
far they are true; and he does not attempt 
it, if he is a man of sense. Spiritual science 
demands no more. The truths must be 
learned, thought about, and acted upon. We 
can alone know whether they are true by 
practising them, just as in all other cases. 
All philosophy (says Goethe) must be loved 
and lived. The Christian admits but one 
philosophy, the highest ; comprehending what- 
ever is true in other philosophies ; explaining, 
reconciling, and uniting in one harmonious 
whole all other truths : and his philosophy 
must be lived, or its truth cannot be ascer- 
tained. If it is lived, then it will be loved. 
No one ever fairly, lived it, who did not 
love it. But unless these steps have been 
taken, the man commits the same kind of 
folly in rejecting spiritual truths, as he would 
in rejecting the higher laws of optics (which 
are quite as difficult of belief to the unin- 
structed), without having mastered the science. 
And yet men of really high attainments in 
science are met with, who pronounce dog- 
matically on the highest truths of Christi- 
anity, rejecting their very essence, although 
they have never given their minds fairly to 



Spiritual Science. 123 

the subject, and practically tested it. The 
advantages which this possesses over other 
sciences is, that it requires none of the 
favourable outward circumstances, which are 
so necessary to the successful study of the 
others. Leisure, and the means of support- 
ing existence, and of making experiments, 
are essential in the other sciences. To live 
and to support a family is often a sad draw- 
back on the progress of an experimental 
philosopher. But the student of spiritual 
truths carries with him the object of his 
investigations ; and his daily labour and every 
occurrence of the day, especially those called 
disappointments, mortifications, annoyances, 
and the thousand natural ills which are his 
inheritance, are just those circumstances which 
are best fitted for putting the truths of this 
science to the fairest test. 



Spiritual Sense -organs. 

The belief in the unseen, in a God, in 
another state after death, in our immortality, 
is so common with all races of men at all 
times, that we cannot but recognize the 
existence of a faculty of the mind, the true 



124 Spiritual Sense-organs. 

exercise of which, is in such contemplations. 
The common contemplation is a Fact, which 
proves the mental faculty. Now it would 
be contrary to all analogy, to imagine there 
could be a faculty of the mind, without a 
corresponding outward object for the exercise 
of that faculty. The eye would be useless 
without objects of sight ; the ear, without ex- 
ternal causes of sound ; the wish for acquisi- 
tion, without things; benevolence, self-esteem, 
or love of praise, without persons : and for 
the faculty for contemplating unseen things, 
there must be corresponding unseen objects. 

There are two very obvious distinctive 
marks of this belief in the unseen. It is 
elevating, and at the same time mysterious. 
It does not belong to the lower nature of 
man which is akin to animals, but it is that 
which raises him above them, and is charac- 
teristic of his humanity. Among all nations, 
those who have been most gifted with this 
faith, have been regarded as superior to their 
fellows. But, at the same time that it is a 
high faculty, there is a want of distinctness 
and clearness in the objects, a certain mys- 
teriousness, and veiled splendour ; still, this 
looking as it were through a clouded glass at 



Spiritual Sense-organs. 125 

a too brilliant light, does not diminish the 
conviction of its reality ; for, at all times, the 
doubt whether they are in the right or not, 
has been with sceptics, not with believers. 

From these facts, then, we conclude that 
the mind has certain high faculties, for recog- 
nizing a condition of things which is at pre- 
sent unseen ; and that these faculties are not 
perfectly developed. And this conclusion is 
strengthened by our knowledge of a great 
physiological law. Of this, the process of 
hatching an egg affords an example. The 
eye of the chick, at an early stage, is the 
most prominent feature ; and although the 
future bird is lying in a bag of transparent 
water, yet the eye is constructed for sight 
in the air. Now, as the chick exhibits evi- 
dence of sensation in this state, there can 
be no doubt but that it has a confused sen- 
sation of light, such as we have under deep 
water. It sees as it were through a glass 
darkly, but its eye is formed for clear vision 
in the air, — a higher life. Supposing the 
bird could reason on its own vision, how 
obscure would be its notions on the use of 
the eye, and on light ! This familiar instance 
exemplifies the general law, by which an 



126 Spiritual Sense-organs. 

animal, in its transition from one stage of 
growth or of life to another, has, in its lower 
condition, organs formed for a higher condi- 
tion, whose functions are not called out, or but 
imperfectly developed, in its lower state. 

The analogy with our own mental condi- 
tion is most evident. 

Kevelation tells us that we are really con- 
stituted for a higher state of existence, which 
is now unseen by us; that we are in our 
lower or preparatory state ; and that conse- 
quently we have only certain partial and 
obscure views of this higher state : the terms 
employed are, "we see through a glass darkly." 

Physiology teaches us, that it is a common 
law, for the same living being, to pass from 
a lower to a higher state of organization; 
and that, in the lower stage, certain organs 
are formed for its use in the higher. If, 
therefore, we find that the human mind has 
certain rudimentary faculties for the contem- 
plation of the unseen ; analogy supports reve- 
lation in the conclusion, that, as these organs 
of the invisible (these " spiritual sense-organs") 
are here in an imperfect condition, we must 
look to a higher stage of existence for their 
perfect developement. 



Spiritual - Sense-organs. 127 

Practically the reason of this is sufficiently 
clear. Man has a free-choice ; he must act 
in this lower state with a view to the higher 
one, and he has sufficient light to know 
there is a higher one, though unable to com- 
prehend what that higher condition is. No 
more than the bird immersed in water, and 
surrounded by a shell, could fancy the kind 
of world which the breaking of that shell 
would introduce him to, can the man (struggle 
as he will) look through that thin curtain 
which separates him from the unseen. 



Substance. 

How completely the old meaning of the 
word substance has fallen into disuse! That 
sense by which it is applied in the Liturgy 
to the Deity, and by the translators of the 
Bible to Faith, as the substance of things 
hoped for, is lost ; and we apply it solely 
to visible matters, such as the senses re- 
cognize ; and invisible substance would seem 
an entirely incongruous epithet. Here the 
derivation helps us, " quod stat subtus, that 



128 Substance. 

which stands beneath, and, as it were, sup- 
ports, the appearance." # 

This may be illustrated by magnetism. 
If a magnet is placed beneath a piece of 
stretched paper, and iron filings are scattered 
on it, they will be arranged in certain curves : 
now the " substance " of these curved lines, 
in the old sense of the word, would be the 
invisible magnetism : — it is that which stands 
under, or supports the iron filings, keeping 
them together in a certain form, being the 
unseen power of which they are the visible 
image. In the same way the Deity may 
be regarded as substance, from being the 
invisible support of this visible world. What 
we now call " imponderable agents," or 
" bodies," would all have been called, by 
the older Greek philosophers, " incorporeal 
substance." To use the same example, 
as they would have recognized an essential 
difference between the matter of iron, and 
the magnetism moving it, they would have 
classed the two differently, calling the one 
matter, and the power which moved it "in- 
corporeal substance;" and as the power moved 
the matter, and (as it were) commanded it, 

* Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, p. 6. 



Substance. 129 

they considered it nobler than the matter, 
or of a higher nature ; the highest form of 
this "incorporeal substance" being the One 
Mover of all things, the Deity. 



Light. 



The reason exhibits to us an ideal state 
of perfection. The understanding " realizes 
the nearest approximation to this, under 
existing circumstances." The idea of " super- 
sensual beauty " which the reason contem- 
plates, the understanding of the artist, vivified 
by the imagination, attempts to embody in 
his works ; the Christian, in his Life. Thus 
Christians with the highest aspirations have 
been highly gifted with imagination, as the 
poetry of which the Bible is full testifies. 
That Light which lighteth every one which 
cometh into the world, is the reason in its 
purity. Sin has obstructed its free passage 
to our souls, preventing or distorting its 
rays, though all are still dimly lighted by 
it ; and even those who prize most proudly 
the beauty of this Light, feel that their 
corrupt will prevents them from acting up 



130 Light. 

to their ever-present Pattern. But Christ 
is the embodiment of that Light, the perfect 
pattern of the prudential understanding, acting 
under the guidance of the divine Light of 
reason ; and through Him we are enabled to 
receive this true Light ; the ideal pattern is 
present to us in its completer beauty. By its 
power our weakened will is aided, enabling us 
even here to attain somewhat nearer to our 
ideal standard, purified by comparison with 
its perfect model. 



Spiritual Analogies. 

Our intellect is strengthened by commu- 
nicating with other intellects, by collision 
with other minds. Our feelings are increased 
and strengthened by friendship, social inter- 
course, the mutual charities of life. Life 
is generated by life; light by light; heat by 
heat; magnetism by contact with magnets. 
And so it is with our spiritual nature. 
Intercourse with spirit, like with like, 
strengthens that. God's Spirit works with 
our spirit, to strengthen and purify it. We 
must go to the fountain-head of our spiritual 
being, for daily, hourly, momently supplies. 



Spiritual Analogies. 131 

Nothing will supersede this. Intercourse 
with the spiritual part of our fellow-creatures, 
or with their thoughts in books, will help. 
We feel it does, and that we are the better 
for it, but it is both limited and impure ; 
like drinking at a little rill, which has con- 
tracted many impurities in its course, instead 
of going at once to the spring-head where 
the water wells out of the earth, pure, fresh, 
and living. Prayer, thus viewed, seems so 
accordant, in its object and results, with all 
that is known of the communication of natural 
powers, that it is a " reasonable service," and 
by analogy exactly calculated to produce the 
effect it promises, a growth of the highest 
powers of the mind, by direct and immediate 
contact with the original source of those 
powers. 

Analogies between Natural and 
Spiritual Generation. 

The powers which carry on the life of 
all living beings are obtained from without : 
from the air, the food, warmth, and light. 
There is a hidden living principle fed by 
the forces of Nature. 



132 Analogies between Natural 

So it is with the soul. There is a will : 
but this will derives all the goodness which 
it can appropriate, from the Source of all 
goodness. It may choose to be in union 
merely with nature through the body, and 
thus live a sensuous life only, higher, or 
lower ; getting its enjoyment from food or 
drink, from sound or sight, living a gross, 
sensual, or a more refined aesthetic life 
(aesthetic, being only a Greek word for 
sensual, after all). But if it seeks goodness 
as its sole happiness, it must derive this from 
the Source of all goodness. This is the doc- 
trine of Christian life, and it is in strict 
analogy with the principles of physical life. 

The reception and growth of this new 
germinal principle has been compared, by 
Jesus Christ himself, to the process of ordi- 
nary birth. 

A flower opens. When it has attained 
its perfect form, and the acme of its fullest 
beauty, a few grains of the dust of those 
delicate columns, which the blossom encloses, 
fall on the slender central tubes which spring 
from the seed-vessel beneath. A particle of 
this dust, passing down the tube, is conveyed 
to the seed already formed beneath, and gives 



and Spiritual Generation. 133 

to it the power of becoming a plant like its 
parent, of producing flowers of like beauty, 
and of continuing in like manner its species. 
All we know of this process is, that a 
particle of dust, which in the microscope is 
but a simple cell, is brought into contact 
with a seed, and from this contact the seed 
derives a living power which it would not 
otherwise possess. The seed is formed with- 
out that contact, but never can become a 
plant unless that process has taken place. 
But, by means of this simple cell, a power 
is conveyed to it of a mysterious and exalted 
kind, a power which enables the dry and 
rough seed to develope into a living creation, 
decked with beauty more refined, more deli- 
cate, more finished, purer far, than any other 
earthly thing, and of perpetuating this race 
of beauty. The fact we see, we cannot 
explain the cause, — it is an ultimate fact. 
Look at a seed, and, without experience, who 
could believe in the possibility of this meta- 
morphosis? And with experience, with the 
indefatigable observation of men who devote 
their lives to the investigation, and are assisted 
by all the aids which microscopes can furnish, 
nothing more is known of the mode in which 



134 Analogies between Natural 

this change is effected, than the bare fact 
of contact. All the rest is as hidden, as 
mysterious, but not more hidden, nor more 
mysterious, nor less in accordance with what 
we do know, than the mystery of our faith, 
with which it is compared. We are assured, 
by authority we cannot question, that a 
certain principle will be given us, under cer- 
tain conditions, which will develope in us a 
spiritual life, commencing here, but flowering 
in eternity ; and that the death of this body 
is as necessary for the developement of its 
new powers, as decay of the seed in the 
earth is requisite for its metamorphosis into 
a living plant. 

To reject the means of this spiritual birth, 
because they are mysterious, would be, as if 
the seed, furnished with all our powers of in- 
sight and of choice, were to reject the means 
of its vivification, because it could not com- 
prehend the mode of operation. 

The evil of our nature is an " ultimate 
fact ; " every man carries about him the proof 
that it is true, though he cannot explain the 
reason. Its remedy is most reasonable : the 
reception of a new spiritual principle or life. 
Tens of thousands have experienced the 



and Spiritual Generation. 135 

reality of this new principle. Thus the pos- 
sibility of the change is a well ascertained 
truth. It is a fact. The means are myste- 
rious, but not more so than any other ulti- 
mate causes, for the apparatus and rationale 
of all ultimate causes are inexplicable. That 
a higher life should be commenced in a lower 
state, is a spiritual fact which has its analogy 
in vital laws. It is a fact that the human 
embryo is at first a simple cell, and that it 
is gradually built up, so that, at different 
periods of its growth, it has the appearance 
of some of the lower animals. 



Analogies between the Vital Principle 
and Spiritual Life. 

Both require external influences. Life exists 
in the egg, but unless continuous and equable 
heat is applied with air, the life remains dor- 
mant. Life exists in the seed brought from 
the pyramids of the Pharaohs, but it does not 
germinate, unless exposed to the influence of 
air, light, and moisture ; and a continued 
supply of the same outward stimulants are 
necessary, both to the continuance of life, 



136 Analogies, etc. 

and to the developement of the living being. 
All living beings require air, warmth, light, 
moisture, food. These are not the life, but 
they are necessary to its activity. And it 
is so with our spiritual life. God implants 
it, but outward means are necessary for its 
growth. Sacraments, the ordinances of the 
church, family and secret prayer, self-denial, 
alms-giving, mortification of our sins and 
senses, a constant watch over our thoughts 
and feelings, the study of the Bible, are 
necessary to our spiritual life ; they are as 
the air, and warmth, and light, and food, to 
our common life. It is not enough that we 
may understand certain doctrines, and assent 
to their truth; this is an affair of the in- 
tellect : it is not enough that we feel certain 
affections ; this is an affair often of mere 
sensation : both may be as food to our spi- 
ritual life, but they are not that life itself, 
that life of God in the soul of man, which 
it is the object of Christianity to cherish 
and to perfect, so as to make us again in 
God's Image. 



137 



The Full Enjoyment of Nature. 

To enjoy nature fully, it must be con- 
templated with the whole mind, not with 
the accomplished perceptions only, which ap- 
preciate, artist-like, the beauty of the colour- 
ing, the delicacy of the aerial hues, and 
the wondrous unity of such variety ; not 
with cultivated sensations merely, and with 
finely-strung nerves, by which such beauties 
are felt with a thrill that passes into the 
blood like a physical pleasure, but with these, 
and^yet superadded to them, a spiritual per- 
ception of the Divinity in all ; not a mere 
power acting through them, but of a personal 
designer, and this personal God, our Father. 

" By grace divine, 
Not otherwise, Nature ! we are thine," 

says that poet, whose life has been spent (as 
has been finely said), "in seeing this visible 
universe." 

"Wordsworth's poetry" (says Christopher 
North) " stands distinct in the world. That 
which, to other men, is an occasional plea- 
sure, or possibly delight, and to other poets 



138 The Full Enjoyment op Nature. 

an occasional transport, the seeing the visible 
universe, is to him — a life — one individual 
human life — namely, his own — travelling his 
whole journey from the cradle to the grave. 
And that life, — for what else could he do 
with it ? — he has versified — sung : and there 
is no other such song. It is a memorable 
fact of our civilization — a memorable fact in 
the history of human kind — that one per- 
petual song. Perpetual, but infinitely various 
— as a river of a thousand miles, traversing, 
from its birth-place in the mountains, divers 
regions, wild and inhabited, to the ocean 
receptacle." 

The Spiritual Tendencies of Modern 
Physical Science. 

In the earlier part of this century, the 
tendency was towards materialism. Young 
men of ability, who cultivated science, were 
too often influenced by Voltaire's wit, and 
Rousseau's sentiment, and captivated with 
that apparent freedom of mind in France, 
which boldly threw off all the old restraints 
of custom, of habits, of political institutions, 
of religious feeling, and dared to think for 



The Spiritual Tendencies, etc. 139 

itself, and not merely to speculate, but to 
act. They mistook licence for freedom. 
They had not learned, that the art of taming 
their own wills was a higher and a more 
difficult one, than that of taming tyrants' 
wills ; nor that he that is free, must first 
be wise and good. Nor had they been taught 
by their philosophers, that contempt for the 
wisdom of their ancestors is a proof, not of 
maturity, but of infancy of thought. One 
of the effects of this liberation of their in- 
tellects from all other guides than their own 
will, and the consequent determination to see 
and to judge of all things for themselves, 
was, in religion, a disbelief in revelation ; 
and, in science, the same disposition not to 
recognize the unseen; and the wish and at- 
tempt to attribute all visible appearances, to 
what was visible — to matter. Schlegel attri- 
butes the French revolutionary philosophy to 
the materialism of Locke, acting upon the 
excitable and ill-balanced French mind, which 
carried out unconditionally speculative theories 
into decided actions ; and he explains our com- 
parative quiescence, by the equilibrium of the 
British character, which prevents the nation 
from running into any extremes. 



140 The Spiritual Tendencies of 

But the pendulum is now swinging the 
other way, and the tendency of even phy- 
sical science is towards impressing the great 
truth, that what is visible depends on that 
which is invisible ; that the active Powers 
of Nature are all unseen, and have none of 
the characteristics of matter. 

The electric telegraph is one of the great 
teachers of this lesson. The chemical action 
of a little diluted sulphuric acid on zinc at one 
end, will, by means of a wire, impress a motion 
on a compass needle, hundreds, nay thousands 
of miles off, with almost instantaneous velocity. 

How can this be conceived by the mind? 
how explained ? The source of power is the 
oxidation of the zinc. The union of oxygen 
gas with the zinc, disengages a force which 
acts upon the metal wire, and moves all its 
particles ; and this motion is attended with a 
second force, transverse to the wire's length, 
which moves the compass needle. 

A few years ago, it was commonly thought, 
that the disengagement of a fine fluid or 
fluids would explain these motions ; but, as 
no fluid and no matter at all have been 
ever detected, by sight, smell, tests, or even 
weight, this unphilosophical hypothesis is 



Modern Physical Science. 141 

given up by the deepest natural philoso- 
phers. Still, if matter had existed, there 
must have been something else to move 
that matter; for, however fine the supposed 
matter must have been, it could not have 
moved itself; and the cause of its motion 
would have been the true object of experi- 
mental investigation. If then it is not and 
cannot be matter, what is it? It is that 
which moves matter. It is active power. 
It is galvanic force, magnetic force. It is 
therefore more akin to the will and to the 
Deity (whose essential characteristics are 
"invisible power") than to matter. 

Thus we are led to the conviction, that 
certain physical movements are the effect of 
invisible power ; that the moving agent we 
can command, is the cause of certain move- 
ments ; and that these motions of matter are 
merely the outward and visible signs of an 
inward and invisible force. 

The experiments of Faraday have conclu- 
sively proved to him the identity of the elec- 
trical and the galvanic forces ; and that the 
latter is merely a form of chemical force. 
The mind, therefore, that has been looking 
at the lightning as illuminated lines of elec- 



142 The Spiritual Tendencies of 

trical power: on the magnetic needle trem- 
bling to the north, as the sign only of a 
power constantly directed to that point of 
the earth: on all chemical actions as the 
same electrical power, acting on molecules, 
instead of in currents; diffused, instead of 
limited to lines returning into themselves: 
will have no difficulty in viewing all living 
organizations as outward signs of invisible 
power. What are those green leaves, which 
luxuriantly clothe the summer earth, but 
the beautiful signs of an unseen but most 
active force, the garment of the Invisible? 
And such a train of thought necessarily 
leads to higher views still. Lightning, how- 
ever sublime, light so beautiful, warmth so 
necessary, magnetism so useful, all these 
imponderable agents are less wonderful than 
life. Here is a power at work, in a dry, 
coarse, unlovely seed, which will bring forth 
flowers of spotless beauty ; a power, which, 
out of the two fluids of an egg, will build 
up a living bird, with a pulsating heart, with 
brain, nerves, sight, hearing, instinct! A 
power, which, like the rest, is invisible, but 
higher than either ; a constructive power, 
or rather a combination of numerous powers 



Modern Physical Science. 143 

into one whole, capable of building up a 
complex mechanism, the best adapted for 
certain definite purposes, and fit to repair 
itself, to preserve its existence, and to perpe- 
tuate its race. 

And these living beings act. The bird 
builds nests untaught, with perfect art; the 
bee constructs cells with geometrical preci- 
sion; the ants work harmoniously in well 
ordered communities. The movements here 
are voluntary ; but the perfect work, without 
experience, proves the will to be under the 
control of an intelligent power, we call instinct, 
which compels those who are possessed 
with it, to act in a certain prescribed course ; 
a will which in man alone is free. 

The steps, which have thus brought the 
mind to consider itself, have led it to re- 
gard all power as invisible. How much 
the argument is strengthened by this reflec- 
tion on the will. The man is conscious that 
he has within him the faculty of originating 
force, and that this power is known to others 
only in its effects, and that he recognizes 
the motions of other living beings, as the 
outward signs of an invisible power, such as 
he knows he possesses. 



144 The Spiritual Tendencies, etc. 

And when from this height the mind looks 
again on Nature as a whole, and sees its 
harmony and its beauty, how each corre- 
sponds to all, and the whole to each part, it 
sees the evidence, not merely of an unseen 
force indicating power, but knowledge and 
wisdom. It sees that all these movements 
indicate a mover, that these designs indicate 
a designer, that this consummate wisdom 
indicates a God. The unity of the whole 
evincing one God ; the power, an almighty ; 
the knowledge, omniscience ; the wisdom, all- 
wise. The mind is not likely to rest here. 

The human being requires a higher know- 
ledge than Nature can supply. He seeks for 
a key to the riddle of his own existence, for 
a knowledge which will give him power over 
himself; and he finds it in a direct revela- 
tion from God ; which satisfies all his wants, 
which shows him why he is not in harmony 
with outward nature, nor with his own better 
nature, and points out the remedy. 



London: Printed by S. Beniiiy & Co., Bangor House, Shoe Lane. 



PUBLISHED BY Mr. VAN VOORST. 



The Illustrations to tlie Works enumerated in this List have been designed or 
drawn and engraved expressly for the Works they respectively embellish, 
and they are never used for otlier Works. 



ILLUSTRATED REPRINTS. 

THE VICAR OP WAKEFIELD. 

With 32 Illustrations by William Mulready, R.A. ; engraved by 

John Thomson. 

1/. Is. square 870., or 36s. in morocco. 

Uniform with the above, 

WATTS' DIVINE AND MORAL SONGS. 

With 30 Illustrations by C. W. Cope, A.R.A. ; engraved by 

John Thomson. 

Square 8vo., 7s. 6d. or 21s. in morocco. 

Also, of uniform size, 

SHAKSPEARE'S SEVEN AGES OF MAN. 

Illustrated by William Mulready, R.A. ; J. Constable, R.A. ; Sir 
David Wilkie, R.A. ; W. Collins, R.A. ; A. E. Chalon, R.A. ; 
A. Cooper, R.A. ; Sir A. W. Callcott, R.A. ; Edwin Landseer, 
R.A. ; W. Hilton, R.A. 6s. 

A few copies of the First Edition in Ato. remain for sale. 

THE FARMER'S BOY AND OTHER RURAL TALES 
AND POEMS. 

By ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. 

With 13 Illustrations by Sidney Cooper, R.A., Horsley, 

Frederick Tayler, and Thomas Webster, R.A. 

A few copies on large paper, of a size to correspond with the above four 

Volumes, price 15s. (Small Paper copies, 7s. 6d.) 



GRAY'S ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD. 

Each Stanza Illustrated with an Engraving, from 33 original drawings 

by the most eminent Artists. 

Post 8vo., price 9s. 

A Polyglot Edition of this Volume, with inter-paged Translations in the 

Greek, Latin, German, Italian, and French Languages. Price 12s. 

Uniform in size, 

THE BARD, 

By GRAY. 

With Illustrations by the Hon. Mrs. John Talbot. 
Post 8vo., 7s. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



This Series of Works is Illustrated by many Hundred Engravings ; every 
Species has been Drawn and Engraved under the immediate inspection 
of the Authors; the best Artists have been employed, and no care or 
expense has been spared. 

A few copies have been printed on larger paper, royal 8vo. 



THE QUADRUPEDS, by Professor Bell. 11. 8s. 

THE BIRDS, by Mr. Yarrell. Second Edition, 3 vols. 41. 14s. 6d. 

COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EGGS OF BIRDS, 
by Mr. Hewitson. 2 vols. 41. 10s. 

THE REPTILES, by Professor Bell. Second Edition, 12s. 

THE FISHES, by Mr. Yarrell. Second Edition, 2 vols. 31.* 

THE CRUSTACEA, by Professor Bell. Now in Course of 
Publication, in Parts at 2s. 6d. 

THE STAR-FISHES, by Professor Edward Forbes. 15s. 

THE ZOOPHYTES, by Dr. Johnston. Second Ed., 2 vols. 21. 2s. 

THE MOLLUSCOUS ANIMALS AND THEIR SHELLS, by 
Professor Ed. Forbes and. Mr. Hanlev. Now in Course of 
Publication, in Parts at 2s. 6d.; or Large Paper, with the Plates 
Coloured, 5s. 

THE FOREST TREES, by Mr. Selby. 28s. 

THE FERNS AND ALLIED PLANTS, by Mr. Newman. 25s. 

THE FOSSIL MAMMALS AND BIRDS, by Professor Owen, 
11. lis. 6d. 



A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, by 
Professor T. Rymer Jones. 8vo, 11. 18s. 



* " This book ought to be largely circulated, not only on account of its scientific 
merits, but because it is popularly written throughout, and therefore likely to excite 
general attention to a subject which ought to be held as one of primary importance. 
Every one is interested about fishes — the political economist, the epicure, the mer- 
chant, the man of science, the angler, the poor, the rich. We hail the appearance 
of this book as the dawn of a new era in the Natural History of England."— 
Quarterly Review, No. 116. 



JOHN VAN VOORST, 1, PATERNOSTER ROW. 



WORKS ON ARCHITECTURE, etc. 



A TREATISE ON THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF DECORATED 
WINDOW TRACERY IN ENGLAND. By Edmund Sharpe, M.A:, 
Architect. Illustrated with 97 Woodcuts and 6 Engravings on Steel. 
8vo. 10s. 6d. 

A SERIES OF ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE WINDOW TRACERY OF 
THE DECORATED STYLE OF ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITEC- 
TURE. 60 Steel Engravings, with Descriptions by Mr. Sharpe. 8vo. 21s. 
ARCHITECTURAL PARALLELS ; or, The Progress of Ecclesiastical Archi- 
tecture in England, through the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, exhibited 
in a Series of Parallel Examples selected from Abbey Churches. By Edmund 
Sharpe, M.A. 121 Plates in tinted outline, each 18 in. by 12 in. half 
morocco. 131. 13s., or large paper, 16/. 10s. 
INSTRUMENTA ECCLESIASTICA : a Series of 72 designs for the Fur- 
niture,? Fittings, and Decorations of Churches and their Precincts. Edited 
by the Ecclesiological, late Cambridge Camden, Society. 4to. 1/. lis. 6d. 
A MANUAL OF GOTHIC MOLDINGS. A Practical Treatise on their 
Formation, Gradual Development, Combinations, and Varieties ; with full 
Directions for copying them, and for determining their Dates. By F. A. 
Paley, M.A. Second Edition, Illustrated by nearly 600 Examples. 8vo. 7s. 6d. 

Other Works by Mr. Paley. 
THE CHURCH RESTORERS ; A Tale, Treating of Ancient and Modern 
Architecture and Church Decorations. With a Frontispiece. Foolscap 8vo. 
4s. 6d. 
A MANUAL OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. With a full Account 
of Monumental Brasses and Ecclesiastical Costume. Foolscap 8vo., with 70 
Illustrations, 6s. 6d. 
BAPTISMAL FONTS. A Series of 125 Engravings, Examples of the 
different Periods, accompanied with Descriptions; and with an Introductory 
Essay by Mr. Paley. In 8vo. II. Is. 
PERRAN-ZABULOE ; with an Account of the Past and Present State of the 
Oratory of St. Piran-in-the-Sands, and Remarks on its Antiquity. By the 
Rev. Wm. Haslam, B.A., Resident Curate. Foolscap 8vo., with several 
Illustrations, 4s. 6d. 

HERALDRY OF FISH. By Thomas Moule. The Engravings, 205 in 
number, are from Stained Glass, Tombs, Sculpture and Carving, Medals and 
Coins, Rolls of Arms, and Pedigrees. 8vo., price 21s. A few on large paper 
(royal 8vo.) for colouring, price 21. 2s. 

THE ISLE OF MAN; its History, Physical, Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Legend- 
ary. By the Rev. J. G. Cumming, M.A., F.G.S., Vice-Principal of King 
William's College, Castletown. Post 8vo., with Illustrations, 12s. 6d. 

TRAVELS IN LYCIA, MILYAS, AND THE CIBYRATIS, in Company 
with the late Rev. E. T. Daniell. By Lieut. Spratt, R.N. and Pro- 
fessor E. Forbes. With numerous Illustrations, including Views of the 
Scenery; Plans of Ancient Cities and Buildings; Plates of Coins and Inscrip- 
tions; Cuts of Rock Tombs, Fossils, and Geological Sections; and an original 
Map of Lycia. 2 vols. 8vo. 36s. 

On February 1st, 1850, will be publislied, Part I. of a Second Series of 

INSTRUMENTA ECCLESIASTICA ; comprising Cemeteries, Schools, and 
other Ecclesiastical Buildings. To form one volume uniform with the first series. 

JOHN VAN VOORST, 1, PATERNOSTER ROW. 



WORKS PUBLISHED BY Mr. VAN VOORST 

DURING ia49. 



THE POOR ARTIST ; or, Seven Eye-Sights and One Object. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. 

EVENING THOUGHTS. By a Physician. Post 8vo. 

A MANUAL OF THE BRITISH MARINE ALGM : containing Generic 
and Specific Descriptions of all the known British Species of Sea- Weeds, with 
Plates to illustrate all' the Genera. By W. H. Harvey, M.D., M.R.I.A. 
Keeper of the Herbarium of the University of Dublin, and Professor of Botany 
to the Royal Dublin Society. 8vo. 21s., coloured copies, 31s. 6d. 

A SYNONYMIC LIST OF BRITISH LEPIDOPTERA. By Henry 
Doubleday. 8vo. sewed, 2s. 

A TREATISE ON THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF DECORATED 
WINDOW TRACERY IN ENGLAND. Illustrated with 97 Wood- 
cuts and 6 Engravings on Steel. 8vo. 10s. 6d. — And by the same Author, 
a Series of 60 Illustrations engraved on Steel, of the WINDOW TRACERY 
OF THE DECORATED STYLE OF ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITEC- 
TURE. Edited, with Descriptions, by E. Sharpe, M.A. 8vo. 21s. 

A HISTORY OF BRITISH REPTILES. By Professor Bell, Sec. R.S.. 
F.L.S., F.G.S. Second Edition, with 50 Wood Engravings. 8vo. 12s. 

NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF 
THE VARIOUS STRATA IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT. By Capt. 
L. L. Boscawen Ibbetson, K.R.E., F.G.S. With a Map in relief, coloured 
geologically. 8vo. 7s. 6d. 

THE RUDIMENTS OF BOTANY. A familiar Introduction to the Study of 
Plants. By Arthur Henfrey, F.L.S., Lecturer on Botany at St. George's 
Hospital. 16mo., with illustrative Wood-cuts, 3s. 6d. 

FIRST LESSONS FOR SINGING CLASSES. By the Rev. Arthur 
Guyon Purchas, Precentor of St. John's College, Bishop's Auckland, New- 
Zealand. Post 8vo., sewed, 2s. 6d. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF BIRDS OF JAMAICA. By P. H. Gosse. Coloured 
Plates. Imperial 8vo., 36s. 

ON PARTHENOGENESIS; or, The Successive Production of Procreating 
Individuals from a single Ovum. By Prof. Owen, F.R.S., &c. 8vo., 5s. 

ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES IN SUSSEX ; with a systematic Cata- 
logue of the Birds of that County, and Remarks on their Local Distribution. 
By A. E. Knox, Esq., M.A., F.L.S., F.Z.S. Post 8vo., with 4 Lithographic 
Views, 7s. 6c?. 

THE SEA-SIDE BOOK : being an Introduction to the Natural History of the 
British Coasts. By Professor Harvey, M.D., M.R.I.A. Second Edition. 
Fcap. 8vo., with 69 Illustrations. 5s. 

ON THE NATURE OF LIMBS. A Discourse delivered on Friday, February 
9th, at an Evening Meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. By 
Professor Owen, F.R.S. 8vo., 7s. 6d. 

THE GOLD SEEKER'S MANUAL. By Prof. Ansted. M.A., F.R.S. 

THE PHYTOLOGIST. Nos. 92, to 103. Is. each. 

THE ZOOLOGIST. Nos. 73, to 84. Is. each. 

TRANSACTIONS OF THE MICROSCOPIC SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
Vol. II. Part 3. 1 0s. 

A HISTORY OF BRITISH MOLLUSCA AND THEIR SHELLS. By 
Professor Ed. Forbes, F.R.S., and Sylvanus Hanley, B.A., F.L.S. 
Parts 13 to 24. 8vo. at 2s. 6d. plain, or royal Bvo. coloured, 5s. 



London : Printed by S. Bentley & Co., Bangor House, Shoe Lane. 

H 123 82 






^„ 







*°-v v 



*^ * 




5°* 



,/ 










V # % ' 



<^ *< 










°o ^ 



3 V 
^ 



y -^ 



*q* 



*°^ 






* ^ 



«W* V ••- 









•V«* -*& 



/./\/$W\***% 






<* *<77i* ,0^ 



*•• ^ ^ •: 












V » ^ -J 






& 
















,^ v 



^°- 








;♦ ^ 






U j si 



^^ 



'0^ 



c° • 







?v ^ 




<*. '•••" A^ 









0° . 



°o* 














/ 







>♦ .-tffeft \.J :'MM. *+^fi /dfe*. % 



T ©. * • « o 





*o *• . » • A 



•j-v 

















v *►' 



%. 



* • 




<w • 





















4* *fcir*,^ 



* ^ V 









v ♦ 







V -N* 



H°x 



.V^V 






V .J^LV cv 









J."-"*, 




